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IOWA AND THE FIRST NOMINATION 
OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



BY F. I; HERRIOTT 

Professor of Economics, Political and 
Social Science, Drake University 



[ Reprinted with additions ( V . 3; troin The A nnui* of Iowa, Vol VUI . 



It 



SOME OF IOWA'S DELEGATES 
Chicago Convention. May 16-18. I860 




WILLIAM B. ALLISON, 
U. S. Senator 



JAMES F. WILSON, 
U. S. Senator 



JOHN A. KASSON 
U. S. Diplomat 



ALVIN SAUNDERS, 
U. S. Senator 



IOWA AND THE FIRST NOMINATION 
OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



BY F. I. HERRIOTT. 

Professor of Economics, Political and Social Science, 
Drake University. 

The delegates from Iowa will go to Chicago to nominate a Presidential 
ticket — the strongest ticket possible — and to this end will be glad to listen 
to the suggestions of well informed friends at Washington or elsewhere, 
but they go unpledged, uncommitted, and fully at liberty to hear all 
suggestions and then to do what shall commend itself to their unfettered 
judgment as best for the cause. As it is in Iowa, so it will be elsewhere. 
— Horace Greeley (Feb. 8. 1860). 1 

. . . the blot does not rest upon the history of the Union, that this 
[Lincoln's nomination] the most fate-pregnant decision which an Ameri- 
can convention had ever to make, was brought about by blind chance in 
combination with base intriguers. Far from it. It was the conscious 
act of clear-sighted and self-sacrificing patriots to whom honor and grati- 
tude in the fullest measure are due. — Von Hoist (1892). 2 

I. 

EXPECTATIONS AND THE MEAGRE MINUTES. 

The average Iowan is wont to indulge in the presumption 
that Iowa's politicians and statesmen have always played 
prominent parts in our national affairs. While often ex- 
pressed in language more exuberant and vasty than modesty 
or truth sanctions, the assumption is fairly well founded. In 
recent years no one will gainsay this State's prominence in 
our Federal councils. Fifty and sixty years ago the case 
was likewise. Iowa's chiefs commanded attention and exacted 
consideration in the conduct of the national government. 

Mr. James G. Blaine in closing his characterization of the 
leaders of the Senate at Washington in the momentous session 
of 1850, says: "Dodge of Wisconsin and Dodge of Iowa, 
father and son, represented the Democracy of the remotest 

(1) New York Tribune, Feb. 17, I860.— Extract from letter dated at 
Mansfield, Ohio, written after making circuit of the Northwestern States. 

(2) Constitutional and Political History of the United States, Vol. VII, 
p. 173. 



FROM FIKE h FIKE 
New ;:: u.ook» 

DES WuiMca, ia. 






—2— 



outposts of the North-West. ... At no time, before or 
since in the history of the Senate has its membership been so 
illustrious, its weight of character and ability so great." 1 
Henry Dodge, father, was Iowa's first Governor de facto when 
the State was a part of Wisconsin ( 1836-38 ). 2 In the country 
at large Iowa was regarded as a stronghold of the democ- 
racy and her first Senators, A. C. Dodge and Geo. W. Jones, 
were considerable factors in the party councils of Presidents 
Pierce and Buchanan. Both men were given important diplo- 
matic posts when the political revolution in Iowa enforced 
their retirement from the Senate, the former at Madrid and 
the latter at Bogota. At the National Democratic Convention 
in Charleston in 1860, the Douglas forces triumphed in the 
struggle over the platform and we are told that it was "skill- 
fully accomplished under the lead of Henry B. Payne of Ohio 
and Benjamin Samuels of Iowa." 3 

In President Taylor's short-lived administration, an Iowan, 
Fitz Henry Warren of Burlington, acquired fame as Assist- 
ant Postmaster-General by his swift elimination of Democratic 
office-holders, 4 and his resignation because of indignation 
over Fillmore's apostasy on the subject of slavery. 
Afterwards, in 1852, he became the Secretary of the National 
Executive Committee of the Whig party in the Pierce-Scott 
canvass. 5 Later the pages of J. S. Pike show us that the 
brilliant flashes of Warren's pen made him a forceful factor 
in the determination of anti-slavery opinion and procedure. 6 
It was his clarion calls in 1861 that aroused the furore 
in the north against the inactivity of the new administration 
and forced the precipitate movement "On to Richmond" 
which ended in the disastrous rout at Bull Run. 7 



pi R'aine's Tivntv Years of Congress, Vol. 1. p. 90. 

(2) Governor Robert Lucas, first Territorial Governor of Iowa, 1838-41, 
was the permanent chairman of the first National Democratic Convention, 
that met in Baltimore, May 21, 1832. See Parish's Robert Lucas, p. 111. 

(3) B'aine. Tbid, p. 162: McClure's Our Presidents and How We 
Make them, p. 167. 

' ') Bf>n Perlev Poore. Reminiscences, Vol. I, p. 355. 

(5) Annals of Iowa (3d ser.), Vol. VI, p. 486. 

(6) Pike's First Blows of the Civil War, pp. 483-4, 496; and Von 
Hoist's Vol. VII. pp. 155. 157. 

(7) Letters from Washington to New York Tribune; see Mr. E. H. 
Stiles. Annals Tb., 487-410. It is not unlikely that President Lincoln's 
refusal to appoint him Postmaster-General, for which he was earnestly 
pushed by Iowans, made Warren's ink more acid than otherwise. 



The triumph of James W. Grimes in 1854 made him a na- 
tional figure. His election as Governor was a surprise to the 
entire country. This was not strange for Iowa was looked 
upon as a "hot-bed of dough faces," 1 and the annals of 
the ante helium period contain no clearer, stronger, or more 
courageous pronouncement against the aggressions of the 
Slavocrats than his address "To the People of Iowa" when he 
accepted the nomination for Governor. 2 His election was 
mostly his personal achievement and not the result, as it 
would be nowadays, of organization and widely concerted ef- 
fort. Senator Chase of Ohio wrote the new champion that he 
had waged "the best battle for freedom yet fought." 3 
Giddings declared that he had made "the true issue" on 
which the battle had to be fought in the northern States. 4 In 
the Senate from 1859 to 1869 he was distinguished "for iron 
will and sound judgment" 5 and became, says Perley Poore 
"a tower of strength for the administration" in the crises 
of the war. G 

Grimes's victory in 1854 sent James Harlan to the Senate 
in 1856. He, too, says a distinguished historian, immediately 
made his "mark." 7 His speech on the Lecompton Consti- 
tution won Seward's admiration. s The Republican Asso- 
ciation at Washington printed and sold at a low price Sena- 
tor Harlan's speeches along with those of Collamer, Hale, 
Seward and Henry Wilson. 9 Harlan was a statesman the 
country reckoned with, Mr. Blaine telling us that he later 
became "one of Mr. Lincoln's most valued and most confiden- 
tial friends and subsequently a member of his cabinet." 10 

No fact, in the writer's judgment, indicates more strik- 
ingly the potency of Iowa's influence at Washington fifty 
years ago than President Lincoln's appointment in the fore- 
part of his first term of Samuel P. Miller as Associate Justice 
of the Supreme Court. He was endorsed strongly by Iowa's 
bench and bar and by others in States adjacent. The Presi- 
dent, however, delayed making the appointment. Upon per- 



(1) Von Hoist. Vol. V, p. 78. (2) Salter's Life of Grime*, pp. 34-50. 
(3) lb., p. 54. (4) lb., p. 63. (5) Blaine, lb., p. 321. (6) Poore, lb., 
Vol. II, p. 100. (7) Rhodes* History of U. S., Vol. II, p. 130. (8) Pike's 
First Blows, etc.. p. 417. (!)) Rhodes, lb., p. 1 3 I . (10) Blaine, lb., p. 321 



— 4- 

sonal inquiry, Mr. John A. Kasson, then Assistant Post- 
master-General, learned that the reputation of the Keokuk 
lawyer "had not then even extended so far as to Springfield, 
Illinois" (a distance but little over one hundred miles). 1 
Nevertheless the appointment was made and Justice Miller 
became almost immediately the "dominant personality" of 
our great court. 2 The significance of his elevation is this — 
President Lincoln was not a petty spoilsman and he had no 
special fondness for the office monger; but he was a politician 
par excellence. He made appointments with an eye single 
to the public good, which was then the preservation of the 
Union, yet he always gave close attention to the influence of 
the Potentialities back of the aspirants for office who pressed 
their claims upon him. 3 Government is not a philosophical 
abstraction or an academic thesis. It is a constantly shifting 
balance of contrary and divergent forces and interests. It 
was essential to success in combating the nation's enemies at 
the front for the President so to co-ordinate factors and con- 
trol conditions behind him as to assure him at once non-inter- 
ference and efficient support. Justice Miller's appointment 
must have appeared to President Lincoln not only credit- 
able and safe, but eminently worth while, insuring strength 
upon the bench and influential support for his administration, 
both in Congress and in Iowa. Besides consideration 
of the influence of Iowa's leaders we should naturally pre- 
sume that recollections of the prominent part taken by Iowans 
on his behalf in the Convention that first nominated him for 
the Presidency played no small part in deciding President 
Lincoln to select the then but little known jurist of Keokuk. 
This presumption, however, is apparently upset if the curi- 
ous make casual inquiry. There is nothing whatever in the 
record of the proceedings of the Convention showing that Iowa 
did anything for any candidate worthy of special note or 
remembrance. One of Iowa's delegates moved an amendment 
to a motion to thank Chicago's Board of Trade for an invi- 



(1) Mr. John A. Kasson to Charles Aldrich — letter dated Washington, 
D. C, Nov. 10, 1893. See Annals, Vol. I, p. 252. (2) Characterization of 
Chief Justice Chase quoted in Annals, lb., p. 247. (3) See Mr. Horace 
White's introduction to Herndon & Weik's Lincoln, Vol. I, p. XXII. 



tation to an excursion on Lake Michigan. 1 Another dele- 
gate secured an amendment allowing each State to choose 
its member of the National Committee as it pleased. 2 
When the Committee on Credentials reported that Iowa had 
"appointed eight delegates from each Congressional district 
[Iowa had only two] and sixteen Senatorial delegates," when 
entitled to but eight votes, the minutes record " [laughter]." 3 
In the entire proceedings of the Convention, Iowa is 
credited with but one significant performance and that was 
manifestly either a blunder due to excitement or a play to the 
galleries — A delegate elicited "great applause" by seconding 
the nomination of Abraham Lincoln "in the name of two- 
thirds of the delegation of Iowa." 4 Yet, on the first 
ballot immediately following, Iowa gave Lincoln only two 
votes, or one-fourth of her quota; and on the third ballot 
even when it was clear that the candidate of Illinois was al- 
most certain to be nominated Iowa gave over a third of her 
vote to other candidates. 5 After Mr. Cartter of Ohio 
changed four of Chase's votes to Lincoln and decided the re- 
sult then a delegate from Iowa joined the chorus and on 
behalf of the delegation moved to make it unanimous. 6 
But there is nothing in all this that denotes conspicuous 
achievement or influence, neither staunch service nor effect- 
ive generalship such as politicians exact. 

If we turn to formal histories or accounts of national cur- 
rency or general use our presumption is further seriously 
disturbed. Iowa's influence in the nomination seems to have 
been conspicuous chiefly by its absence. There are no refer- 
ences to Iowans whatever in scores of volumes relating the 
events of the convention week. One would almost imagine that 
Iowa's men were not present at all. In practically but one 
case has the writer found mention of Iowa's influence in a 
favorable connection and even here the assertion is disputed. 
In two other instances distinguished national historians refer 
to her representatives in Chicago in derogatory terms that 



(1) Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 
1856, 1860, 1861,, published by Charles W. Johnson, p. 91. (2) lb., p. 107. 
(3) lb., p. 110. (4) lb., p. 149. (5) lb., pp. 149, 153. (6) lb., p. 154. 



— 6- 

seem to imply conduct not worthy of commendation or re- 
spect. 

In spite of appearances thus to the contrary there are sub- 
stantial reasons for thinking that men from Iowa played an 
influential part in bringing the Convention to what Von Hoist 
declares was "the most fate-pregnant decision which an 
American Convention ever had to make," verifying precisely 
Horace Greeley's prediction three months before, to-wit, " As 
it is in Iowa, so it will be elsewhere." In what follows I shall 
deal with the animadversions referred to and then exhibit the 
growth of Republican sentiment in Iowa regarding the Presi- 
dential nomination, the character of Iowa's delegates, and the 
nature of their work in the Convention. 

II. 

DID CLANS OR CHIEFS CONTROL THE CONVENTION f 

Notwithstanding Professor Von Hoist's conclusive demon- 
stration to the contrary 1 there still prevails a wide- 
spread notion that the first nomination of Abraham Lincoln 
was received by the country at large with surprise and shock, 
a consummation believed to be the issue of either cabals and 
machinations against New York's candidate or the irrational 
overwhelming influence of a shouting, surging mob round 
about the delegates, or of both combined. This notion is not 
a common popular prejudice merely, but the deliberate con- 
clusion of academic chroniclers and savants. 2 In a general 
way Mr. James Ford Rhodes seems to agree with Von Hoist's 
presentation of the major facts and their interpretation, us- 

(1) Von Hoist, History, Vol. VII, pp. 149-186. (2) Judge J. V. Quarles 
in Putnam's Monthly, Vol. II, p. 59 (April, 1907), says that the nomina- 
tion was a "tremendous surprise" ; Admiral French E. Chadwick in Causes 
of the Civil War, 18591861 (Amer. Nation: A History, Prof. A. B. Hart, 
editor, Vol 19, 1906), says "the result was a shock of surprise to the 
country at large," p. 119; Dr. Guy Carlton Lee in The True History 
of the Civil War (1903), says: "The nomination was received with a 
shock of surprise by the country," and he adds Wendell Phillips' harsh 
exclamation in The Liberator, "Who is this huckster in politics?" Gold- 
win Smith in The United States (1893), p. 241, says: "But it was mainly 
to cabal against Seward that Lincoln owed the Republican nomination" ; 
Professor Alex. Johnston says: "Much of the opposition to Seward came 
from the mysterious ramifications of factions in New York." Lalor's 
Cyclopedia of Political and Social Science (1882), reprinted in his Amer. 
Political History, [edited by Professor J. C. Woodburn, 1906], Vol. II, p. 
212. 



— 7— 

ing the same or similar evidence. But the sweep and implica- 
tions of his assertions give color and substance to the general 
opinion. In his account of the conditions precedent and de- 
termining the developments and results during the Conven- 
tion week, May 14-18, 1860, Mr. Rhodes makes the following 
statements in his History of the United States, Vol. II: 

Contrasting the Republican National Conventions of 1856 and I860, 
he says: then [1856] the wire pullers looked askance at a 

movement whose success was problematical, now [1860] they hastened 
to identify themselves with a party that apparently had the game in 
its own hands; then the delegates were liberty-loving enthusiasts and 
largely volunteers, now the delegates had been chosen by means of the 
organization peculiar to a powerful party, and in political wisdom were 
the pick of the Eepublicans (p. 457). 

Seward 's claim for the nomination was strong. * * * Intensely 
anxious for the nomination, and confidently expecting it, he was alike 
the choice of the politicians and the people. Could a popular vote on 
the subject have been taken, the majority in the Republican States 
would have been overwhelmingly in his favor. One day at Chicago 
sufficed to demonstrate that he had the support of the machine politi- 
cians (p. 460). 

While much of the outside volunteer attendance from New York 
and Michigan favoring Seward was weighty in character as well as 
imposing in number, the organized body of rough fellows from New 
York City, under the lead of Tom Hyer, a noted bruiser, made a great 
deal of noise without helping his cause. All the outside pres- 

sure was for Seward or Lincoln, there being practically none for the 
other candidates. While many of Seward's followers were disinterested 
and sincere, others betrayed unmistakably the influence of the machine. 
Lincoln's adherents were men from Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa, who had 
come to Chicago bent on having a good time and seeing the rail-splitter 
nominated, and while traces of organization might be detected among 
them, it was such organizaton as may be seen in a mob (pp. 462-463). 
(Italics here.) 

Several important facts are clearly asserted in the fore- 
going and some serious implications are no less apparent. 
First, politicians and wire pullers rather than earnest self- 
sacrificing patriots made up the dominant forces of the Chi- 
cago Convention of 1860. Second, Seward was the choice of 
the politicians and people alike. Third, honesty or sincerity 
was for the most part lacking among the rank and file of 
Seward's followers at Chicago; fourth, earnestness or 
serious purpose was notably absent from the followers of Mr. 



— 8— 

Lincoln. By "adherents" he apparently refers chiefly to the 
"volunteer outside influence," namely, unofficial attendants, 
rather than to accredited delegates. Yet the comprehensive- 
ness and variable sweep of portions of previous paragraphs 
suggest that a first impression that delegates were also in- 
cluded is not unwarranted. And, fifth, Mr. Rhodes would 
have us conclude, we may infer, that Lincoln's nomination 
was an amazing conclusion resulting from the variable but 
coercive suggestions of a dominant organized mob. It is but 
fair to say, however, that Mr. Rhodes seems to shrink from this 
last conclusion, for later he says: "One wonders if those 
wise and experienced delegates 1 interpreted this manip- 
ulated noise as the voice of the people" (p. 468). 

Since Edmund Burke confessed his inability to discover "a 
method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people," 
scholars and scientists have not deemed it appropriate or safe 
to condemn institutions, parties or governments, let alone 
peoples en bloc. Mr. Rhodes is not a psuedo-historian who 
imagines that cynical contempt for the commonality is a solid 
basis for historical scholarship; and he does not proceed on 
the assumption that all men in politics are scamps or scoun- 
drels, although he squints occasionally in that direction. lie 
has deserved renown as a scientific historian who depends 
upon extensive and minute researches and basic facts, whose 
narrative is characterized by judicial balance and impartiality, 
by caution and sobriety of statement. Common prudence 
makes one hesitate to question his assertions or conclusions. 
Nevertheless several queries are pertinent which are not 
wholly academic for there are scores, probably hundreds of 
men still living, men of eminence in letters and politics in 
many cases, who took part in that conclave at Chicago. I 
shall not here undertake to discuss all the phases of the asser- 
tions referred to except indirectly as they affect the character 
or conduct of Iowa's representatives at the Convention. 



(1) Enlarging upon Blaine's notation (Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 
I, p 164), Mr. Rhodes gives a list of some of "the many noted men, or 
men who afterwards became so," mentioning e. g. E. H. Rollins (N. H.), 
John A. Anirews. George S. Boutwell, B. L. Pierce (Mass.), Gideon 
Wells, William M. Evarts and George W. Curtis, David Wilmot and 
Thaddcus Stevens, Francis P. and Montgomery Blair, Carl Schurz, "John 
A. Kasson of Iowa," p. 469. 



— 9— 

We may take the statements involving the character and 
conduct of the Iowans in one of two ways. Either the 
writer meant all that the paragraph implies or he did not 
mean to be taken strictly. In either case we may ask if char- 
acter and sincerity were confined conspicuously to the unof- 
ficial Seward supporters hailing from New York and Michigan 
and hence his discrimination of them in the forepart of the 
paragraph whence the quotation. There were ardent admir- 
ers of the statesman of Auburn from Iowa as well as from 
Massachusetts who mingled in the throngs that surged the 
lobbies of the Tremont and Richmond Hotels; such men as 
Fitz Henry Warren of Burlington and Samuel A. Bowles of 
The Springfield Republican. Men of like character and local 
fame by scores and hundreds were with them from the same 
States and from Wisconsin and Minnesota, and other States 
as well ; men who worked just as earnestly for Senator Seward 
and felt the bitter disappointment of his defeat as keenly as 
did his followers from Michigan and New York. Seward sen- 
timent in Iowa, as will be shown in some detail later, was 
intense, staunch and wide-spread and when the news of his 
non-success came his partisans in many a community almost 
wept in grief and vexation and gloom held them for 
awhile. 1 

Another implication that seems to be necessarily involved 
in the discrimination made in the citation under review is 
that there was an utter absence of weighty character and 
sincerity among the "outside volunteer" followers of other 
candidates. Such a conclusion doubtless w T as not contem- 
plated nor desired perhaps. If so, it may seem unkind to 
take the statement in all its rigor, but words are rather flinty 
substances and if thrown recklessly and they strike, hurt and 
mar. Such a construction is not a captious inference. The 



(1) Hon. W. G. Donnan, a Representative of Iowa in the Forty-Second 
and Forty-third Congresses (1871-75), was born and educated in New 
York. He came to Iowa in 1856. In 1860 (as now), he resided at Inde- 
pendence, and was a strong admirer of Seward. In a letter to the writer 
(February 4, 1907), he says: "Went over from Union College, where I 
was then a student, and heard Seward's great speech, organizing the 
Republican party. Could have wept when 'the Great New Yorker' failed 
of the nomination. How fortunate for the country and the party that 
Lincoln was made the nominee." 



—10— 

uninformed or undiscriminating reader usually rests with first 
impressions and the impression made is not favorable to the 
people and representatives of other States. In these halcyon 
days we are used to wholesale indictments of public men and 
political conventions in our partisan press and periodicals 
that retail the ' ' literature of exposure ; ' ' but we do not ex- 
pect them from scholars who work in the clear, cool air and 
the dry, white light of a library. 

But what is the significance and what is the justification 
of the assertion that "Lincoln's adherents were men from 
Illinois, Indiana and Iowa who had come to Chicago bent on 
having a good time?" Why such a discrimination? Were 
the admirers and promoters of the "Rail-Splitter" more in- 
clined to that sort of thing than the crowds that shouted for 
"Old Irrepressible?" What is meant by a "good time," 
harmless diversion or reprehensible license? 

With pious and proper persons a good time implies noth- 
ing more serious than an excursion or picnic with its mild 
ecstacies and hysterics. No doubt hundreds and thousands, 
when they joined the throngs bound for Chicago, thought 
only of the cheap rates and seeing the crowds and "the 
sights" of the city. Among gay lords and certain politicians, 
however, a good time signifies often, if not generally, fun 
and frolic that begins with huge fuss and noise and reckless 
abandon that, unless curbed, rapidly runs the leeways into 
riot and carousal. If the latter is meant is there any special 
reason to suppose that Lincoln's adherents had a greater pre- 
disposition in that direction than the workers for Sew r ard 
from the same States or from other States ! 

Mr. Rhodes is usually careful to give his authorities, chap- 
ter and verse, for his important assertions. He cites accounts 
of several participants in the Convention, Messrs. Greeley. 
Welles and Halstead for statements in the first part of the 
paragraph, but there is none given upon the point here re- 
ferred to. Their reports, however, do not seem to warrant any 
such differentiation. If we are to believe Mr. Halstead 's par- 
ticular and synchronous account there were few if any States 
whose representatives were not largely given to noisy demon- 
stration, intemperance and rowdyism. If any State achieved 



—11— 

sorry pre-eminence in this respect it was New York and not 
any western State. 1 

If the truth, and nothing but the truth, should be told 
in its painful particulars anent this common phase of politi- 
cal conventions some excerpts from Halstead's racy narrative 
should have been reproduced. On board the train carrying 
easterners to Chicago, including New Englanders probably. 
New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians and Ohioans certainly, he 
found a degree of intoxication that was "much greater" than 
that he witnessed on trains entering Charleston at the Demo- 
cratic convention a few weeks before. The number of "pri- 
vate bottles" was "something surprising;" and "our West- 
ern Reserve was thrown into prayers and perspiration last 
night by some New Yorkers who were singing songs not found 
in hymn books. " As to conditions in Chicago he avers : " I do 
not feel competent to state the precise proportions of those 
who are drunk and those who are sober. There are a large 
number of both classes ; and the drunken are of course the 
most conspicuous and according to the principle of the nu- 
merical force of the black sheep in a flock the most multitu- 
dinous. ' ' 2 He was compelled to sleep in a room in his 
hotel that was full of revellers in a state of "glorious" exhil- 
aration "o'er all the ills of life victorious;" and "irrepressi- 
ble" until a late hour. In the morning he was aroused by the 
"vehement debate" of a galaxy of volunteers or delegates 
sitting up in bed "playing cards to see who would pay for 
gin cocktails all around, the cocktails being considered an in- 
dispensible preliminary to breakfast." 3 He does not in- 
form us whether those assiduous patriots were adherents of 
Bates or Chase, Seward or Lincoln. Another paragraph writ- 
ten later may indicate: "The New Yorkers here are of a 
class unknown to western Republican politicians. They can 
drink as much whisky, swear as loud and long, sing as bad 
songs and 'get up and howl' as ferociously as any crowd of 
Democrats you ever heard or heard of. " 4 

All of which, if true, only makes for tears. But the fact is 

(1) Halstead's Conventions of I860, p. 121: See also Carl Schurz's 
Reminiscences of a Lone; Life. McClnre's Magazine, Vol. XXVITT. p. 11 :'. 
(February, 1907). (2) Halstead, p. 121. 

(3) lb., p. 122. (4) lb., p. 1 10. 



— 12— 

utterly fallacious if it suggests the conclusion that such men 
numerically predominated in the Chicago Convention or that 
noise and the maudlin influence and inanities of hysterical 
and intoxicated men chiefly controlled the deliberations or 
decisions of the duly accredited representatives of the Repub- 
lican party into whose hands the freemen of the north had 
committed a great cause. The people everywhere throughout 
the north were conscious that the Convention held the Na- 
tion's fate in its hands. Old party lines had fast disap- 
peared. One common cause, one common fear lest slavery 
should engulf them, made partisans forget their differences 
and unite. They knew that fortune was with the Republicans 
if wisdom controlled their councils. Lincoln's searching 
questions at Freeport in 1858 and Douglas' fatal answer "no 
matter what may be the decision of the Supreme Court" had 
split the Democracy in twain at Charleston. 1 The people 
of the north with common impulse journeyed to Chicago be- 
cause they were certain as were the yeoman and gentry jour- 
neying to Naseby that a spectacle was to be witnessed — their 
leaders and their cohorts in contention for championship and 
the right to lead the Lord 's hosts against a common foe. As to 
the character and conduct of the throngs and contestants the 
reports of two eye-witnesses may suffice. Writing home to his 
paper The Gkiardian (May 16) Mr. Jacob Rich, then of Inde- 
pendence, one of Iowa's most forceful editors in those days 
and later a Warwick himself in our politics said : 

It is a matter of universal comment that if the whole country had 
been methodically picked over, there could scarcely have been procured 
a concourse containing the same amount of ability and respectability 
as is manifested by the immense crowd in attendance on the Conven- 
tion. The great mass of the men on the platform as delegates are 
men of age, of experience, of reputation, of judgment. Gray heads 
and bald heads are in the ascendant which bespeaks for the action of the 
Convention calmness and deliberation. In fact, inside and outside there 
seems to be less of boisterous enthusiasm than earnest, thoughtful ac- 
tion—fewer ebulitions of zeal than exhibitions of determination and 
confidence. Still, livelier demonstrations are not wanting. 

( 1 ) On his train going to Charleston, Mr. Halstead says : "The Mis- 
sissippians have the Freeport speech of Douglas with them and intend to 
bombard him in the Convention with ammunition drawn from it." Ib. f 
p. 6. 



—13— 

Mr. Rich was young then and perhaps prejudiced as young 
men sometimes are, and he may not have estimated correctly, 
but the late Carl Schurz, who always saw clearly and spoke 
his mind, essentially agrees with his conclusions. Reviewing 
in the evening of his life the events of his great career Mr. 
Schurz says of that Convention in which he took no small 
part: 

The members of the Convention and the thousands of spectators as- 
sembled in the great Wigwam presented a grand and inspiring sight. It 
was a free people met to consult upon their policy and to choose their 
chief. To me it was like the fulfillment of all the dreams of my 
youth. i 

There is another assumption or implication in the narrative 
quoted above that is common in the majority of accounts of 
the Chicago Convention, namely, that the crowds in the city 
at the time consisted chiefly of the friends of the "Rail-Split- 
ter." New York's candidate had his workers to be sure, 
but they were, so to speak, mostly organized troops or regu- 
lars, bands and marching clubs, e. g., Gilmore's band from 
Massachusetts and Tom Hyer's contingent from New York, 
whereas the militia, the masses, the crowds, "the mob" that 
surged the hotel lobbies and the streets were the plain people 
who had come to Chicago to work for Honest Abe. 

It is difficult to reconcile this common notion with ante- 

(1) McClure's Magazine, lb., p. 416. 

Besides Fitz Henry Warren, Mr. Jacob Rich, and Governor S. J. 
Kirkwood mentioned above, Iowa's volunteer attendance at the Chicago 
convention included among others — -Mr. James B. Howell, then editor 
of The Gate City of Keokuk and later U. S. Senator from Iowa ; Mr. 
James B. Weaver of Bloomfleld, soon afterward Brevetted Brig. General 
for distinguished gallantry at Ft. Donelson, Shiloh and Corinth, who 
represented Iowa several times in Congress, and in 1880 and 1896 was 
a nominee of a national party for the Presidency receiving, in 1896, 
1,042,531 votes and 22 ballots in the Electoral College; Mr. James Thor- 
ington, of Davenport, a member of Congress from Iowa 1855-57; Mr. 
Hiram Price also of Davenport who represented Iowa for eight years in 
Congress ; Judge John F. Dillon, likewise of Davenport, then a judge of the 
district court, afterwards Chief Justice of Iowa, U. S. Circuit Judge 
1869-79, Professor in Columbia Law School, distinguished writer on legal 
subjects — the author of a classic on Muncipal Corporations and an in- 
spiring treatise on the Laws and Jurisprudence of England and the United 
States; Mr. Amos N. Currier, then instructor in Central University of 
Pella, who a few days since retired from active service as Dean of 
the College of Liberal Arts of the State University of Iowa ; Mr. F. W. 
Palmer then of Dubuque, who had served two terms In the legislature of 
New York and who later represented Iowa for two sessions in Congress 
1869-1873, and later editor of The Inter Ocean of Chicago. 



-14— 

cedent probabilities resting on sundry facts that were noto- 
rious at the time and that are obvious in nearly every account 
of the Convention extant. Historians and biographers of the 
chief candidates all declare with little or no qualification that 
the country at large expected Mr. Seward's nomination. Most 
of them assert that the country was "shocked" at least "sur- 
prised" at his defeat. Col. A. K. McClure has always main- 
tained that "two-thirds of the delegates" wanted to vote for 
Seward. 1 Being in a large sense direct representatives of 
local sentiment in their several States is it probable that the 
crowds which poured into Chicago along with them from all 
points of the compass to cheer and support their delegates 
were contrary minded ! Lawyers would pronounce this notion 
a violent presumption. 

Outside of the delegates who finally voted for Lincoln all 
the visitors from New England, excepting probably Connecti- 
cut, were almost certainly friends of Seward. New York's 
contingent, excepting the few following the lead of Greeley 
and Dudley Field, was all for "Weed and Seward. So it must 
have been with the crowds that poured in from Michigan, Wis- 
consin, and Minnesota. "Bleeding Kansas" was staunch for 
their champion in the Senate. Northern Indiana and Illinois 
were both strongly tinctured with Sewardism, those sections 
having been settled largely by New Englanders and New 
Yorkers, the leaders of both delegations from those States 
having hard work to hold some of the delegates from breaking 
away. 2 

Three-fourths of Iowa's Republicans probably went to Chi- 
cago desiring and expecting Seward's nomination because such 
was the hope in the strongly Republican communities of Iowa. 
Down in Lee county round about Keokuk a "perfect revolution 
in sentiment" in favor of Seward took place between March 
15-30. His Senate speech (March 1) says an Iowan's letter 
quoted in The Tribune, March 30, "seems to have set our 



(1) Leonard Swett's Letter to Joshua H. Drummond, May 27, 1860, 
partially printed in Oldroyd's Lincoln's Campaign, p. 71 ; McClure's Lin- 
coln and War Times, p. 28; Our Presidents and How We Make Them, p 
155 ; and a letter to the writer, May 6, 1907. (2) Authority for statement 
as to Indiana, a letter of Col. A. C. Voris, of Bedford, Ind., (one of her 
delegates) to the writer, May 3. 1907. 



—15— 

prairies on fire with Republican enthusiasm for him and his 
teachings." 1 Writing Governor Kirk-wood May 13, three 
days before the delegates convened in Chicago, Eliphalet 
Price, of Elkader, in northeast Iowa, a keen and earnest Re- 
publican, declared ''that nine-tenths of the Republicans north 
prefer Seward there can be no doubt." Out in then remote 
Sioux City the Republicans "expected" Seward's nomination 
at Chicago. 2 When the news reached Sioux City "a feeling 
of incredulity and disappointment," says The Times, May 25, 
" ' prevailed at first. Here where party ties are weak and party 
lines loose most Republicans favored the nomination of Bates 
and Hickman. Seward had some admirers." 

Now Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Maryland and Mis- 
souri, certainly did not send Lincoln delegations or crowds 
to Chicago. Connecticut sent a Bates delegation. So did In- 
diana. Although neighbors it took three days' hard work on 
the part of Messrs. Davis, Judd, Logan, Palmer and Swett 
to persuade Indiana's delegates to abandon Bates and go to 
Lincoln. It is true that all of the delegates of the States 
mentioned turned to Lincoln eventually, but that is another 
matter. 

Reason and rhyme alike require us to expect that the 
crowds which played such a conspicuous role at the Conven- 
tion were either predominantly for Seward or not prima facie 
for Lincoln. One fact makes it almost necessary to think so. 
Abraham Lincoln was not formally put in nomination for 
the Presidency by the Illinois Republicans until May 10, six 
days before the Convention was to assemble. His managers, as 
Mr. Blaine long ago observed, had "with sound discretion" 
kept his name back.' 1 A few papers of Illinois had advo- 
cated his nomination, but not with such vigor as to prevent the 
resolution instructing the delegates to work for his nomination 
being declared a "surprise" to the Decatur Convention it- 
self. 4 "Lincoln's own delegation from Illinois," says Col- 
onel McClure, "embraced one-third of positive Seward men. 
They were instructed for Lincoln with no hope of his nomina- 

1 New York Tribune (semi-w. ) March 30. - Hon. E. H. Hubbard to 
writer, April 22, 1907. The writer is indebted to Mr. J. C. C. Hoskins of 
Sioux City for the extract from the Sioux City Times. 3 Blaine's Twenty 
Years, p. 167. ■* lb.. 168. 



— Na- 
tion at the time." x The mass of the people in northern Illi- 
nois and through the north — the general promiscuous pop- 
ulation we call the ' ' public ' ' — who swarmed to Chicago were 
hardly alive to the fact that Abraham Lincoln was a candidate 
of high potential. Even after reaching the city the crowds 
could at first see few or no signs that would normally impel 
the miscellaneous and irresponsible elements that make up a 
convention crowd to join Lincoln's cohorts with enthusiasm. 
Up until midnight preceding the nominations the chances 
were clearly in favor of Seward. Thursday midnight says 
Mr. Halstead "Greeley was terrified" and sent his celebrated 
dispatch conceding Seward's victory and Mr. Halstead tele- 
graphed The Cincinnati Commercial likewise. 2 

This discouragement of the anti-Seward men was no less 
decided among Lincoln's adherents. Anxiety and depression 
among them were general and obvious. They slept scarcely 
at all, they were so fearful and active. Col. Alvin Saunders, 
Mr. Chas. C. Nourse and Gov. S. J. Kirkwood were probably 
the most influential Lincoln workers among the Iowans. 
"Early in the evening of the night before the nomination 
was to be made," says Mr. Nourse, "I had gone up to my 
room to get some rest. I was fagged by the long strain of the 
day. The outlook for Lincoln was gloomy, indeed. I recall 
Saunders coming in. He was depressed and dubious about 
our chances of overcoming the New Yorkers. Kirkwood came 
in later. He was nervous and very uneasy and glum. " 3 It 
was not until the small hours of the next morning that their 
hopes of success became energetic. 

If these facts have any significance whatever they seem to 
compel the conclusion that in the forepart of the week at 
least and in all probability on Wednesday and Thursday the 
crowds or mobs were more inclined toward Seward than 
toward Lincoln. It can scarcely be doubted that the corre- 
spondent of The New York Times signing himself "Howard" 
was correct when on Monday night, May 14, he telegraphed 

i MeClure's Our Presidents, p. 155 ; Leonard Swett says there were 
eight out of the twenty-two Illinois delegates favorable to Seward, Old- 
royd, p. 71. 

2 Halstead, p. 141. 3 Interview with Hon. Chas. C. Nourse, Attorney- 
General of Iowa, 1861-1865, Des Moines, Iowa, April 26 and May 12 f 
1907. 



SOME OF IOWA'S DELEGATES AT LARGE 
Chieago Convention, May 16-18, 1860 








JOHN W. RANKIN, 
State Senator 



m. l. Mcpherson, 
State Senator 



L. C. NOBLE, 
Merchant 



COKER F. CLARKSON, 
State Senator 



NICHOLAS J. RUSCH, 
Lieutenant Governor 



H. P. SCHOLTE, 
Minister 



JOHN JOHNS, 
Minister 



\ 



— 17— 

that "Illinois alone works hard for Lincoln." 1 Comment- 
ing in 1883 on his grandfather's defeat (viz. "Weed's), 
Greeley's defection and the fast flying rumors of a " break" 
in the New York delegation in consequence, Mr. Barnes says : 
"But streets and hotels were crowded with enthusiastic 
friends of Seward and even his opponents did not appear to 
believe that he could be defeated." 2 Seward's latest biog- 
rapher declares that "excepting the applause received from 
residents of Chicago all the other candidates together had not 
popular support enough to equal the enthusiasm of the "irre- 
pressibles." 3 

On Thursday the second day when the platform was 
adopted and the Seward men were confident and sought to 
secure a ballot before adjournment Mr. Halstead reported 
that "the cheering of the spectators during the day indicated 
that a very large share of the outside pressure was for 
Seward. There is something irresistible in the prestige of his 
name." 4 And even on the third day when the crisis was 
culminating and all knew that the nominee was to be Lincoln 
or Seward, notwithstanding Lincoln's managers had shrewdly 
crowded the Wigwam with their shouters while Seward's 
phalanxes were parading the streets, the same authority, de- 
scribing the scene following the mention of Seward's name 
says, "Above, all around the galleries, hats and handker- 
chiefs were flying in the tempest together. The wonder of 
the thing was that Seward outside pressure should, so far 
from New York be so powerful. ' ' 5 One of Lincoln 's 
chief field managers, Leonard Swett, says that Seward's nomi- 
nation in the Wigwam "was greeted with a deafening shout 
which, I confess, appalled us a little. ' ' 6 

i New York Times, May 15 : Some may suspect this assertion because 
of the known prejudice of the management of The Times for Mr. Seward. 
Mr. Henry J. Raymond being Weed's first or second lieutenant at Chicago, 
but the impartiality of subsequent dispatches disarms such doubt. 
2 Barnes' Weed, Vol. II, p. 269. 3 Bancroft's Seward, Vol. II, pp. 531-532. 

4 Halstead, p. 140. ■"■ lb., 145. Colonel McClure, who took part 
in the Convention scenes, seems to contradict Mr. Halstead In his Our 
Presidents, etc. (1900) ; he says: "As the ballots were announced, every 
vote for Lincoln was cheered to the echo while there were but few cheers 
for Seward except from the delegates themselves." p. 158. The two ac 
counts are not reconcilable. 6 Oldroyd. p. 72. 



—18— 

If we are not seriously in error the glamour surrounding 
the memory of President Lincoln has produced a notable con- 
fusion in the explanations of his astonishing success at Chi- 
cago. Logicians define it as reasoning post hoc ergo propter 
hoc. Mr. Seward's nomination was expected; Mr. Lincoln's 
was not. Crowds were conspicuous at the Convention ; noth- 
ing like their numbers or performances had ever before been 
witnessed. Popular feeling, excitement and uproar were phe- 
nomenal. But as one chronicler puts it, it was the unex- 
pected that happened. When the clans and tribes assem- 
bled, keen-eyed chiefs soon perceived that the real contest lay 
between the candidates of Illinois and New York. The op- 
ponents of Seward in the doubtful States months previously 
had realized the necessity for his defeat. The chiefs of the 
clans had no sooner assembled than they discovered that Lin- 
coln was the only man on whom all could concentrate. Later 
the crowds hailing from the States whence the leaders came 
began to respond to the appeals of their chiefs. Then the 
ground-swells of partisan enthusiasm began to run heavily 
in Lincoln's favor. By the time the balloting began the surge 
and the roar of the anti-Seward sentiment became portentous 
terrific, overwhelming. The result, however, was not ergo 
propter hoc. There was, of course, much of local fondness for 
Abraham Lincoln, there was perhaps somewhat (but little) 
of "the West versus the East." Engulfing and overmaster- 
ing all was a Cause, its success and the Nation's safety. 

Crowds and mobs, now and then, do exert a potent influ- 
ence upon the decisions of deliberative bodies. But we utterly 
misconceive the nature of the result at Chicago if we conclude 
that the shouting throngs determined the votes of the dele- 
gates. The outcome was not the ordering of the clans and 
tribes clanging their spears and shields, but the decision of 
their chiefs in council. It was a battle of captains and not 
a plebiscite of the militia's rank and file. The clans and the 
ranks listened to the pleadings and protests of Greeley and 
Field of New York, of Curtin and McClure of Pennsylvania, 
of Welles of Connecticut and the Blairs of Maryland and Mis- 
souri, of Lane and DeFrees of Indiana, of Davis, Judd and 
Swett of Illinois, of Kirkwood and Saunders, Nourse and Wil- 



—19— 

son of Iowa, and their favor turned. Convinced soon that 
the champion of their choice could not triumph such chiefs 
and captains as Mr. John A. Kasson and Judge Reuben Noble, 
Mr. John.W. Rankin and Mr. Wm. P. Hepburn, Mr. Coker 
F. Clarkson and Mr. William B. Allison concurred. 

Their concert was not the prejudice of the crowd nor the 
changeable opinion of a mob. It was the conviction of men 
trained in the tactics and strategy of party strife — of men 
who knew that the People's Cause was not to be won merely 
by the recognition of a theory or the exaltation of a favorite 
champion, of men who knew that the imperative condition of 
success w r as the conquest of stubborn adverse conditions. They 
were not idealists or prophets simply, but practical politi- 
cians. They knew that victory perches upon the banners of 
the best organized and best led battalions. Sanguine antici- 
pations and zeal are needed but are not enough. A study of 
maps and regions in dispute, a specific knowledge of the battle- 
fields and a certain commissariat are also prerequisites. 

Politicians in their hysterics and rhapsodies following suc- 
cess are wont to regard victory as vox populi. Thus Leonard 
Swett exclaimed a few days following the convention: "The 
nomination is from the people and not the politicians. No 
pledges have been made, no mortgages executed, but Lincoln 
enters the field a free man." 1 Enough has been exhibited 
to make one skeptical of his assertion. If ever politicians 
controlled, or rather directed, a convention, if ever leaders 
courageously resisted the emotional and erratic impulses of 
the mob or if you please "the people" the Chicago Conven- 
tion was a case in point. We know now that Abraham Lin- 
coln was of all the leaders in view the best that could have 
been chosen to guide our ship of State through the storms 
about to break. So much so that all will incline to agree with 
Admiral Chadwick that if an All- Wise Providence directs the 
destiny of these United States His favor was manifest indeed 
on May 18, I860. 2 But the decision was not the voice of the 
people that spoke but the judgment of patriotic politicians 
who saw or felt the steady ingathering of black nnd fearful 

1 Oldroyd, p. 73. 

2 Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War, p. 123. 



—20— 

forces whose terrific momentum was to wrench the very foun- 
dations of the Deep itself. In choosing their pilot some of 
the methods of politicians were exemplified. Abraham Lin- 
coln sought the nomination but he wished it without lien 
or prejudice. But the prize was not so awarded. Leonard 
Swett either did not know or he forgot about the negotiations 
of Lincoln's field officer, Judge David Davis, with Indiana 
and Pennsylvania, whereby Caleb Smith and Simon Cameron 
were assured of position in the Cabinet if the Rail-Splitter 
was nominated and victory perched on the party standards 
on the Ides of November following. If he was not privy to 
them his Shade must have suffered distress on reading the 
revelations of Lamon and Herndon. 1 

III. 

WERE IOWA'S DELEGATES ON THE TRADE? 

Addressing the Republican State Convention of Iowa at 
Des Moines in 1904 Senator William B. Allison said that of 
all the events in his long career as a public servant he was 
most proud of the fact that as a young man he enjoyed the 
confidence of his fellow republicans to such a degree that he 
was selected as one of Iowa's delegates to the convention that 
first put Abraham Lincoln in nomination for the Presidency. 

Fame in the last analysis is chiefly the historian's favorable 
verdict. The patriot's ambition is the hope that he may 
serve his country in great affairs and be thought well of by 
his compeers and his successors. But it seems to be the fate 
of the patriot or statesman to suffer much from the slings and 
arrows of outrageous fortune. In the clash of political strife 
he expects and endures with what patience he may bold as- 
persions or gross hints adverse to his honor. He knows that 
good men suffer because evil men work, flourish and escape. 
When, however, the storm and stress are over and passion is 
still he does not expect their reiteration in cool blood and 
unless amply justified he resents it. Obviously the greater 

i Lamon, Life of Lincoln, pp.449-450, 457-461 — Herndon, lb., p. 181. 



—21— 

i 
a man's eminence and the finer his type of character the more 

sensitive he is to charges or suggestions implying reprehensi 
ble conduct or petty behavior in matters of great concern. 
Irritation is not lessened when a reflection comes via a partial 
statement that discreetly hits no one in particular but in gen- 
eral each and all thereby involved. It mitigates the smart but 
little when it appears in the sober narrative of an erudite and 
distinguished historian, buttressed by the awesome authority 
of quotation marks. The greater the headway the greater is 
the leeway to twist a quip of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The 
situation is enhanced of course if perchance it turns out that 
no facts justify the allegation or give it even the color of 
justification. Resentment then becomes indignation. 

In a biography of Salmon P. Chase, written by Dr. Albert 
Bushnell Hart, professor of American History in Harvard 
University, a few years since for the well-known series of 
"American Statesmen," appears the following paragraph: 

As the time for the Convention approached, Chase found a few 
friends and staunch delegates from other States; but he got glimpses 
also of a stratum of intrigue into which he could not descend. The 
Spragues were said to have bought the Ehode Island State election for 
$100,000, and some of the Ehode Island delegates were "purchaseable; " 
some delegates from Iowa were on the "trading tacTc," and in In- 
diana there was "a floating and marketable vote." A Philadelphia 
editor wrote to him with unblushing frankness that he had worked for 
Cameron but that "if any little subcontract could be given us which 
would enable us to realize a little profit, we would endeavor to serve 
Ohio to the full extent of our ability." But neither Ehode Island, 
Pennsylvania, Iowa nor Indiana gave any votes for Chase at Chicago, 
(pp. 189-190. Italics here.) 

One receives two decided impressions on reading the fore 
going. First, there was an astounding amount of corruption 
prevalent in the preliminaries, if not in the proceedings, of 
the Republican National Convention of 1860. Second, the 
character or conduct of Iowa's delegates was smirched with 
the same pitch that soiled the delegates from other States. 
All of which, in the classic phrase of Horace Greeley, is 
"mighty interesting, if true." 

The paragraph, however, is a sort of omnibus of damna 
tory citations and sinister suggestions. As is usual with the 



contents of such vehicles the assortment cannot with ease be 
precisely defined or interpreted for the reason that the state- 
ments are somewhat ill-conditioned and indefinite in their 
suggestiveness. A sharp scrutiny of the paragraph leaves 
one in some perplexity. It is not quite clear whether trans- 
actions prior to the assembly of the National Convention are 
referred to only or the proceedings during the Convention 
week are included. It is immaterial for the terms offered 
Chase by the thrifty patriots clearly contemplated specific 
performance in the Convention and thereafter delivery of the 
benefits or goods bargained for, whether cash, contracts, or 
patronage. There is perhaps a distinction but certainly not 
a difference between a delegate who impudently insists upon 
a quid pro quo in the form of an office before supporting a 
candidate or measure and a man who openly resorts to bar- 
gain and sale for cash on delivery. The unlikeness is scarcely 
important, it being merely a sugar-coating or veneer disguis- 
ing a disagreeable thing. 

Although reprehensible conduct is plumply asserted none 
of the statements it is instructive to note are direct or positive 
so that an explicit charge is posited or particular individuals 
are pinioned or pilloried. The Spragues "were said." What 
Spragues ! The family into which Miss Kate Chase married ! 
"Some" of Rhode Island's delegates; "some of Iowa's dele- 
gates were on the trading tack;" and Indiana had "a floating 
and marketable vote." Does the latter relate to the electors 
or to the delegates? Was the trading of the Iowans with a 
view to cash, contracts or offices? 

Stated ordinarily in common political discussion the ref- 
erence to Iowa would be taken to mean but little else than 
the prosaic practice of making combinations or "deals" in 
the final clinch of a convention. But the context with its 
serious accusations or assertions of gross misconduct makes 
the casual reader and the student alike conclude that Iowa's' 
delegates were guilty of crass venality. 

No one needs to be told that in nearly every case Professor 
Hart in effect flatly charges conduct that smacks of crimin- 
ality. No effective corrupt practice act would tolerate such 
proceedings. Disgrace and ouster, if not fine and imprison- 



—23— 

mt 'lit, would promptly ensue, upon the submission of proofs. 
Disagreeable truth must now and then be told. If this is or 
may be necessary the particular persons chargeable with of- 
fensive conduct should be explicitly referred to. 1 Otherwise 
associates free from blame are equally involved, being be- 
smudged or damned by implication. "Professor Hart should 
not make the charge against the honor of our State," says one 
of the delegates yet living who enjoys international fame in 
Diplomacy, Letters and Politics, "without producing some 
proof of its own verity. Indeed, his charge is made in the 
lowest terms. 'Some delegates from Iowa were on the trad- 
ing tack. ' Such indefinite charges it is difficult to answer. ' ' : 
Who were the traders? The delegates who voted for 
Chase, e. g., Judge Wm. Smyth of Marion, and Mr. William 
B. Allison of Dubuque? Or the delegates who did not and 
would not vote for Chase, e. g., Mr. Wm. Penn Clarke, of 
Iowa City, or Col. Alvin Saunders of Mt. Pleasant, Mr. Jas. 
F. Wilson of Fairfield, or Mr. Henry 'Connor of Muscatine, 
Mr. Wm. P. Hepburn of Marshalltown, or the Rev. H. P. 
Scholte of Pella, Mr. Coker F. Clarkson of Metropolis or 
Lieut. Gov. Nicholas Rusch of Davenport, or Messrs. C. C 
Nourse and John A. Kasson of Des Moines? Such inquiries 
are not idle or irrelevant but intrusive and inevitable; both 
on the part of the delegates living and the relatives and 
friends of the dead, and on the part of associates and citizens 
interested in the good name of the commonwealth ; for as we 
shall see later few States sent delegations to the Chicago Con- 
vention having greater caliber and character than was found 
among the official representatives of the Hawkeyes. 

Professor Hart enjoys great fame as a historian. He is at 
once an indefatigable student and narrator and a leading au- 

i If Professor Hart cares to examine an instructive illustration of 
the sort of direct and explicit charge that justice requires if wrong- 
doing is to be asserted, he will find it in the pages of Mr. Charles E. 
Hamlin's Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin, where in the latter*s 
defeat in the Baltimore convention in 1S64 and the nomination of An- 
drew Johnson for the Vice-Presidency is specifically charged to the 
"unscrupulous action" of the then Governor of Iowa — the charge being 
accompanied by exhibits of very damaging evidence that seem to sub- 
stantiate the accusation. (See pp. 477-479.) 

2 Mr. John A. Kasson, to the writer. Letter dated Nahant, Mass., 
August 28, 1906. 



thority in historical criticism and scientific procedure. He is 
therefore entitled to the presumption that he means what he 
says or he does not ; that he must have examined the official list 
of Iowa's delegates and realized that many of them afterwards 
acquired celebrity in our national history or he did not; that 
he must have carefully sifted the evidence for his statement 
or he did not In all cases either alternative entitles us to call 
for specific references and proof, so that the innocent shall 
not suffer with the guilty or to insist upon retraction or modi- 
fication, if his animadversion is unsupported. 

The offense against good men is not lessened in these pre 
mises but increased by the fact that Professor Hart utilized 
and apparently wholly depended upon Salmon P. Chase's pri 
vate correspondence. An eminent public man like Chase is 
daily in receipt of letters from scores of friends, admirers or 
strangers, freely relating their views of men and measures. 
Such epistolary declarations are usually colored greatly by the 
prejudice of the writer's personal or partizan friendships or 
desires; and are often heedless or reckless. As they are not 
intended for the public eye the indiscriminate statements 
matter but little as the recipient is seldom so heedless or reck 
less as to give them publicity. We certainly may presume 
that Chase did not give much currency to the revelations of 
his various correspondents. Certainly he did not expose them 
to the hurt of official and party contemporaries whom he held 
in great esteem or respect ; and he no more would have desired 
to have any use made thereof even after his death during the 
lives of his associates. Messrs. James F. Wilson, John A. 
Kasson and William B. Allison were the official and party 
associates of Chase between 1861 and his death in 1873 and 
each one of them enjoyed national fame for ability and high 
character. And the two last mentioned were living in 1899 
when the biography in question was published and they are 
still living ! Something of a very serious character exhibit- 
ing elaborate or enormous iniquity affecting adversely either 
the public welfare or actually thwarting Chase's ambition as 
regards the nomination at Chicago alone can justify the ex- 
posure of that correspondence in such wise as needlessly to 



besmudge the good names of honorable delegates yet living in 
Indiana and Iowa, and perhaps Rhode Island. 

Inquiry develops the fact that the whole basis for the state 
ment affecting Iowa is the following letter! 1 Its contents are 
given entire. Their use or misuse in the foregoing is the only 
justification for their exhibition here. Only the initials of 
the subscriber are given although as will be apparent, there 
is really no particular reason for withholding his name : 

Gate City Office, Keokuk, Feby. 24, '60. 
Hon. S. P. Chase, 

Dear Sir: Some time since I had your views on the Tariff pub- 
lished in the Gate City, and I have just republished the New Orleans 
Bulletin's notice of your election to the Senate. 

I was at our State Convention, but I found the delegates, who were 
all aspiring politicians, very wary, & it was difficult to sound them, 
though I judged you had about as many friends as anybody. 

We have just received The Tribune of the 20th, which comes out 
for Bates. We were not unprepared for such a move, & yet it rather 
strikes us with surprise. Our impression now is that it will not damage 
you or Seward in this State. 

The Chicago delegates from this (Lee) county are Senator Rankin, 
of this place, & Dr. Walker of Ft. Madison, — both, no doubt, in 
favor of Cameron first & both of them rather on the trading tack. 

I am sorry to say that, as a politician & with leading politicians of 
the State, our friend Ex-Governor Lowe has little influence. 

Will you do me the favor to send, if convenient, a copy of your 
first inaugural — or the one which contained your argument on the 
Single District System. 

Mr. Denison and family are well ; Mrs. R. is not very well, but 
joins me in kind regards. 

Respectfully, 

W.— R. 

P. S. At present, I have no pecuniary interest in the Gate City 
Office. But as the Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Howell, broke his leg last 
November, & is still on his back, and his partner, Mr. Briggs, was 
gone to Washington to fill some place obtained for him by our Col. 
Curtis, — I am left here in full charge for present, but am not certain 
as to my future. W. R.2 

As a base for a serious reflection upon a body of delegates 
we are greatly mistaken if most persons will not regard the 
foregoing letter as utterly inadequate. It is a basis so narrow 
and thin that few persons even in the heat of bitter partizan 
debate would venture to make use of it adverse to any one. 
Prom beginning to end there is nothing whatever in it either 
directly or by fair inference warranting Professor Hart's use 
of the letter in the connection exhibited above. It relieves 



1 Professor Hart to writer, Aug 1 . 24, 1906. 

2 From Papers of Salmon P. Ohas<- in the Library of Congress. Wash- 
ington, D. C. 



the two delegates actually mentioned, as well as all of the 
others from adverse criticism or judgment. The letter, to- 
gether with a communication of a contemporary of W. R 
yet living, gives us the following facts: 

W. R. was a personal friend or old-time acquaintance of 
Salmon P. Chase. He came to Keokuk in 1854 and until 
1861 was business manager of The Gate City. He admired 
Chase much, became a watcher and worker in behalf of the 
Ohioan's candidacy for the presidential nomination and pro 
moted his interests so far as feasible. He attended as a dele- 
gate the Republican State Convention that met at Des Moines 
January 18, 1860, to select delegates to the Chicago Conven- 
tion. He evidently found the delegates — it is not clear wheth 
er he refers to delegates to the State or to those to the national 
convention — chary of expression and wary of questions as to 
their preferences or probable course in regard to the national 
convention. He found, however, or felt, that Chase enjoyed 
about equal favor with the other candidates mentioned. 
Horace Greeley's advocacy of Edw. Bates he did not seem to 
regard very seriously, yet he confesses some surprise. Fin- 
ally, he found the delegates to Chicago selected from his own 
district and county to be both favorably disposed towards 
Cameron of Pennsylvania but both of them rather on the 
trading tack. The next year (1861) W. R., it is interesting 
and instructive to note, secured a position in the Treasury 
Department at Washington under Secretary Chase, wherein 
he continued many years until his death a decade ago ; an 
appointment that was very appropriate, too, for my informant 
says that his "mind was completely wrapped up in finances 
and he wrote almost entirely on that subject" while in Keo- 
kuk. 1 

The exact language of W. R. has not been quoted by Profes- 
sor Hart and it is highly significant. Evidently W. R. had 
pressed Senator Rankin and Dr. Walker for an expression of 
their preferences and probable course without much success 
for he concludes that "no doubt" they were for Cameron, 
that is, they had not told him so explicitly, but he, W. R. 
had inferred so; and further from their manner and perhaps 

i Mr. J. W. Delaplaine of Keokuk to the writer, Jan. 22, 1907. 



—27— 

bits of conversation he suspected that they were "rather" on 
the trading tack. He does not so much as intimate that they 
had broached or hinted at a trade or mercenary transaction. 
What W. R. refers to he does not assert as a fact — he merely 
intimates a surmise of his whereas Professor Hart omits the 
"rather" and absolutely asserts that "some of Iowa's dele- 
gates were on the 'trading tack,' '' his assertion being a bold 
presumption wholly his own, with no substantial proof offered 
therefor. 

In fine, Professor Hart apparently is clearly subject to 
criticism on several counts. First, he misuses Chase's corre- 
spondence while official colleagues and party associates are yet 
alive. Second, he has by a partial statement imputed repre- 
hensible conduct to thirty-two prominent citizens of Iowa 
when only two, if any, were by any manner of means derelict. 
Third, he does gross injustice to the two delegates in question 
for he asserts as a fact what the authority on whom he de- 
pends, does not so assert and intimates nothing that gives even 
color to such a charge of misconduct. Fourth, by an impor- 
tant omission of a qualifying word he perverts the sense of W. 
R. 's statement and thus seriously misrepresents the authority 
he relies upon. Fifth, Professor Hart's language in the last 
sentence of the paragraph quoted above indicates that he did 
not scrutinize the tally sheets of the Convention very care- 
fully. 

Professor Hart says that "neither Rhode Island, Pennsyl 
vania, Iowa nor Indiana gave any votes to Chase at Chicago. ' ' 
The statement is correct as to Pennsylvania and Indiana, but 
it is grossly in error as to Rhode Island and impliedly so as to 
Iowa. On the first ballot Rhode Island gave Chase one vote, 
on the second three votes, and on the third one vote. 
Iowa gave Chase one of her eight votes on the first ballot and 
one-half a vote on the second and third ballots. 1 The 
vote of Iowa represented four Chase delegates on the first and 
two delegates on each of the other ballots. If Professor Hart 
means to be taken literally, Iowa, of course, gave Chase no 
"votes" because she cast but one for him, but Rhode Island 
certainly gave him votes. 

i Proceedings, pp. 149, 152, 153. 



—28— 

Responding to the writer's inquiry as to the meaning of 
his statement and the authority therefor, Professor Hart in 
closing his letter says : "I did not suppose when I quoted the 
phrase that any one would take it to mean that the delegates 
were trading for money. They were probably trying to get 
some assurance as to cabinet appointments, a vice presidential 
candidate, or something of that kind." Professor Hart's 
disclaimer of harmful purpose in quoting W. R.'s harmless 
phrase must be accepted as complete and final. But the ex- 
planation, while it relieves the situation somewhat, does not 
restore the status quo. It does not abolish the paragraph 
with its positive declaration, with its ugly implication. There 
are few libraries in the country that lack the classic volumes 
of "American Statesmen," the series in which Professor 
Hart's Life of Chase appears. Thousands have read and 
thousands will yet read that, when patriots were called upon 
tc make the "most fate-pregnant decision" a national con- 
vention ever had to make, Iowa's notables were mere huck- 
sters and petty traders and they will conclude that they were 
worse. 

In view of the exhibit and analysis of the evidence for the 
adverse charge under consideration a defense of the character 
or conduct of Senator J. W. Rankin of Keokuk, or of Dr. J. 
C. Walker, the former a delegate-at-large, and the latter a 
district delegate is superfluous. Senator Rankin was the law 
partner of Samuel F. Miller, whose elevation to the Supreme 
Bench has already been referred to. Tradition has it that he 
was Keokuk's most brilliant lawyer in the days when the 
Gate City shone with such brilliants. Dr. Walker we shall 
see was a man who enjoyed the confidence of his fellow towns- 
men and was held in high esteem. Characterizing them in a 
personal interview with the writer, Hon. Charles C. Nourse, 
now as in 1860 of Des Moines, one of the leaders of Iowa's 
Lincoln forces before and during the Convention says of his 
associates: "Dr. Walker and Senator Rankin were both men 
of great ability and solid character with a fine sense of honor 
in public matters. Neither pettiness nor desire for private 
gain were moving motives with either." 1 Whatever Dr. 

i Interview with Hon. Charles C. Nourse. lb. 



—29— 

Walker's preference may have been in February, in May and 
at Chicago his voice and votes were from first to last for 
Abraham Lincoln. 1 Senator Rankin, on the other hand, was 
a firm advocate of the nomination of Simon Cameron. One 
of Keokuk's noted lawyers labored for several days prior to 
the Convention to persuade him to vote for Lincoln but with- 
out effect. 2 At Chicago, however, Senator Rankin turned to 
Illinois' candidate as soon as he realized that Cameron's 
chances were nil. 

Taking the phrase ' ' trading tack " in a large and honorable 
sense, and a common sense, and it is not improbable that the 
two delegates mentioned did have certain ambitious plans in 
contemplation for securing vice presidential honors for Iowa. 
As will be shown in a subsequent section, there are reasons for 
thinking that friends of James Harlan, Iowa's distinguished 
senior senator at that time, were not unmindful of a political 
situation that contained many chances in favor of such a con- 
summation. The matter was broached both privately and pub- 
licly and may have been in the minds of Senator Rankin and 
Dr. Walker. 

IV. 

MEN AND METHODS IN CONVENTION.. 

A political convention in a Democracy like ours is of ne- 
cessity a fortuitous concourse. No one ordinarily expects to 
find such an assembly composed only of philosophers and 
cientists, saints and statesmen. On the other hand such con- 
claves are seldom made up of shysters, knaves or fools. For 
the reason, in both cases doubtless, that neither would be tol 
erated by the general public. If the area of interests involved 
is extended or *\e issues at stake vital and momentous, the 
confluence of forces at the common center, no matter how 
quietly they may originate or serenely they may flow in, must 
produce commotion. If the currents thus concenter with 
great momentum a convention in the nature of the case eon 
eludes in a maelstrom. To the unemotional onlooker in lobby 
or gallery and especially to the scholastic who coolly studies 



i Mr. J. P. Cruikshank of Ft. Madison to the writer, April 26, 1907. 
2 Mr. Henry Strong, now of Chicago, to the writer, June 4, 1907. 



—30- 

the records, the din and noise, the excitement, tempests and 
uproar seem utterly absurd and dangerous. Nevertheless they 
are not unnatural. Wisdom does not always predominate in 
their proceedings but no more does irrationality, or stupid 
perversity always prevail. 

Two classes of persons compose our political conventions 
be they state or national. One class consists of those who 
care only for issues or principles. The other class is prin- 
cipally concerned with individuals or personalities — namely 
champions, or themselves. Such gatherings if they are to 
prove efficient must be composed of both classes in about equal 
proportions ; since cranks and visionaries are as certain to run 
amuck and make success impossible, as petty heelers and 
sordid spoilsmen are to offend the law and the prophets. 

Each class divides into two groups. The first class con 
sists of the extremists who insist strenuously upon explicit 
and heroic measures, and declarations of doctrine regardless 
of contrary considerations of time or place, and of the mod 
erates whose foremost interest is always the success of their 
cause but who realize that conditions determine success and 
should control practical measures — hence they support this 
or that champion of their principle believing that their cause 
will attain success more speedily by his promotion. Some of 
the latter type stand staunchly by their champion through 
thick and thin, hoping all things and doing all things in his 
behalf. Others deliberately canvass the situation, coolly cal- 
culate the chances of this or that representative candidate, 
and if they perceive that fortune does not favor their own 
preferences throw their influence in the direction that seems 
most likely to assure approximate success. Further, if their 
first estimate proves wrong they then change. The claims of 
friendship or admiration are not their chief concern; it is 
consideration for the success of their cause that dominates 
them. Iowa had some excellent illustrations of these types 
in the Convention at Chicago. 

Judge Wm. Smyth cast votes for Chase at each ballot even 
when he must have seen that the Ohioan did not have a ghost 
of a show but he was staunch for a principle. Wm. Penn 
Clarke, Rev. H. P. Scholte and six or seven others stood firm 



—31 — 

for Seward throughout the balloting notwithstanding the 
breaks in his columns in the New England States on the 
second and third ballots. The Lincoln men under the lead of 
Col. Alvin Saunders and Mr. C. C. Nourse, in spite of heavy 
odds, worked from the first for the candidate of Illinois. Mr. 
Coker F. Clarkson was a steadfast admirer of both Judge 
McLean and Governor Chase, having enjoyed personal and 
political associations with each in Ohio. In the Convention, 
however, he cast his vote on the first and second ballots for 
Judge McLean. On the third ballot he went to Lincoln. 

The second general class instead of contemplating chiefly 
general principles and grand results is interested principally 
in personalities, either champions or themselves. They in- 
sist lpon and care for correct principles and righteousness in 
a practical way, as do the former class, but they visualize 
then, more in tangible leaders. This class probably comprises 
usually the larger numbers in conventions. This class too is 
easily discernible in two groups or kinds. One kind is made 
up of hero-worshipers, the major number perhaps. They 
feel and see the issues of right and wrong only through per- 
sonalities. A leader who champions their cause they ardently 
admire. There is little or no analysis, no comparison, no 
synthesis of view's or points of conduct. The champion's 
ability, his looks and manner, his prowess in debate, his suc- 
cesses, his steadfastness in the faith, his sacrifices for the cause 
enthrall the mind and energize heart and hand. They join 
his forces and work and proselyte in his behalf. Ardor and 
sentiment are likely to characterize their performances rather 
than cool calculation and reasoning, youth rather than age ; 
and in the progress and culmination of a canvass they are 
wont to hear vox dei in the noise of the shouting throngs of 
the street and the amphitheatre. But enthusiasm and zeal 
if faults are exceedingly common — indeed, most normal per 
sons regard them as commendable virtues. Few regard the 
character of those so delinquent as worthy of indictment on 
the score of sincerity or intelligence for the reason probably 
that it would include most of us. "I was," says Henry Vil- 
lard, "enthusiastically for the nomination of Wm. H. Seward 
***** The nois\ r demonstrations of his followers 



— :w— 

and especially of the New York delegation in his favor made 
me sure, too, that his candidacy would be irresistible." 1 

Most critical persons with a cynical turn of mind are wont 
to sneer much at this sort of thing. But it is not so irrational 
or illogical as may seem at first flush. Large numbers united 
and vocal for a candidate or cause indicate decided unanimity 
of opinion or general concurrence of interests or views. Such 
concurrence of numbers is presumptively the result of rational 
considerations and sensible conclusions. Most men are too 
busy to give particular attention or devote time to the study 
of conditions and causes, of the pros and cons of men and 
measures in issue. They turn to the men of "light and lead- 
ing" to whom they have been accustomed to look and defer. 
They do not supinely follow their leadership but generally 
the consideration that decides them is the feeling that the 
numbers indicate a better or more informed judgment than 
their own. 

The second sort who are interested in personalities rather 
than causes or principles is the group that think of their own 
individual welfare. They may be manifest in that aggravat 
ing species who seek to be on the winning side — they flit and 
flutter between the lines, anxious and uncertain lest they de 
cide unwisely. This class is discouragingly numerous, not 
only in conventions but everywhere else. They mean well 
and usually are harmless in intent; they lack acute intelli- 
gence and steady nerve. They seek popularity and cannot 
endure the idea of defeat or nonsuccess. Another species 
comprises those who follow politics for a livelihood or as a 
profession. Not all or for that matter the major portion are 
petty and sordid in seeking their own interest. There are few 
men who do not covet public honors and promotion, and all 
must live. Affiliation with a party is the chief mode of ad- 
vancement in politics. One ambitious for honors or anxious 
for a livelihood in politics must align himself with some fac- 
tion, interest or issue. Otherwise such an one will be vox 
clamantis in deserto. Hope of immediate personal success may 

i Memoirs, Vol. I, 137. Mr. Villard later became the President and 
creator of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He also was a financial backer 
if not a decisive factor in the management of the two great journals ot 
New York, The Nation and The Evening Post. 



—33- 

be and usually is coupled with the noblest aspirations for 
human welfare. Some thus animated, however, are willing, 
if need be, to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the cause, as 
witness Lincoln's deference to Trumbull and his insistance 
upon putting the Freeport Questions. Others permit the ardor 
of desire to blur the vision and impel disregard of the niceties 
of conduct as was the case with Ohio's noble Roman, Salmon 
P. Chase, in his later relations with his great rival and coad- 
jutor. 

There are, of course, in conventions, no small number who 
are narrow, petty and sordid in their calculations and strife 
for immediate benefit. They regard such a conclave as a sort 
of fair or market where hucksters gather for bargain and sale 
and higgling and haggling is the rule. Oftentimes, alas, the 
dickering is corrupt and utterly vicious. Shakespeare de- 
scribes the conduct of this miserable fraternity in his bines 
depicting the species of human kind that 

Dodge 
And palter in the shifts of baseness. 

The latter class are an abomination and should be given 
short shrift. The former class exhibit a low order of political 
intelligence and virtue. They are simply petty and stupid 
but not necessarily shysters or scoundrels. 

Academicians and arm-chair critics are wont to over-em- 
phasize or misjudge the numbers and the significance of the 
huckstering or corrupt politicians in conventions. A few 
black sheep in a flock makes most persons reach hasty and 
sweeping conclusions whence one infers that the entire num- 
ber is discolored. Taking the daily occurrence of horrible 
headlines in our sensational press they talk as if crime and 
divorce were universal and rampant. Pettiness, sordidness 
and corruption are found in politics and conventions and per- 
haps are more impudent and obtrusive but they are discover- 
able and prevalent in all other walks of life in similar meas 
ure. Again it is not easy to differentiate the bad or unde- 
sirable from the necessary. Petty trading in offices is not 
particularly laudable. Yet combinations or "deals" in the 
large, adjustments of forces and compromises of conflicting 
interests are imperative if a convention is to avoid futile con- 

3 



—34— 

troversy that easily invokes serious estrangements or concludes 
in disruption. 

Among the men from Iowa in the Convention of 1860, were 
a number who possessed rare powers of discernment and 
achievement. They were masters in political tactics and 
strategy; men who shortly thereafter attained great eminence 
in public life and just fame. They severally had their pref- 
erences but the triumph of anti-slavery principles and success 
of the party at the polls were the predominant considerations 
with them. Mr. John A. Kasson preferred Edward Bates of 
Missouri and Mr. Wm. B. Allison's choice was Salmon P. 
Chase ; but after they realized ^he futility of their hopes both 
threw their votes and influence in favor of Lincoln. Col. 
Alvin Saunders at heart would have rejoiced if Seward could 
have been made the candidate but an extended correspond 
ence prior to going to Chicago with leaders in Illinois, Indi 
ana and Pennsylvania convinced him that the nomination of 
the New Yorker put success in jeopardy. Consequently 
notwithstanding his attachment to Senator Harlan, who earn- 
estly desired Seward's selection, Colonel Saunders went to 
Chicago and did yeomen service for the Illinoisan. Governor 
Kirkwood, at bottom prejudiced in favor of Chase because 
of early associations as Democrats in Ohio, frankly wrote 
Iowa's senior Senator that if long and able service were de- 
cisive Mr. Seward was entitled to the nomination, especially 
because he had long been the "best abused man" in the party. 
Nevertheless he concluded that other matters had the right 
of way. Saunders and Kirkwood were perhaps Iowa's lead- 
ers in promoting Lincoln's candidacy: One or the other prob- 
ably taking part in the "Committee of Twelve" whose decision 
doubtless exercised a potent if not decisive influence upon the 
final result. 

A fact of the greatest significance in the conduct of all the 
Iowans in the Convention was their staunch stand and sturdy 
fight in the presence of overwhelming odds. Two of the Chase 
delegates, all of the Seward delegates stood fast throughout 
the three ballots. All of the others apparently decided to go 
to Lincoln, when his chances were not favorable, when Horace 
Greeley had telegraphed The Tribune that the opposition to 



—35- 

Seward could not unite and conceded the latter 's nomina- 
tion. If Iowa's contingent had been petty traders and huck- 
sters, or politicians of the weather-vane sort, they certainly 
would not have aligned themselves with the "Rail-Splitter" 
and his uncertain prospects. They would have joined the 
supporters of Seward the "popular" man, the man whose 
forces were led by the wizard Weed, the man for whom Col. 
A. K. McClure says "two-thirds" of the delegates really, 
wanted to vote. 

V. 

CONDITIONS ATHWART THE PLANS OF WEED, GREELEY. AND THE 

BLAIRS. 

If one inquires of Iowans who were contemporary observers 
of political events in 1860 as to the state of the public mind 
respecting the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, he receives 
various answers. One of Des Moines' leading citizens who 
was an influential Democrat in the capital city in 1860, de- 
clared orally to the writer : ' ' Everybody 'round here was for 
Mr. Lincoln." "Before the Convention?" "That's my rec- 
ollection." Professor Jesse Macy, of Iowa College at Grin- 
nell, writes: "Lincoln before the Convention was unknown 
or he made little impression. . . . Lincoln struck us as a 
surprise." An attendant on the Convention, Mr. J. H. Mer- 
rill, of Ottumwa, says that many from Iowa were present at 
Chicago during the Convention week and they were "almost 
without exception in favor of Seward. ' ' Dr. William Salter 
of Burlington, whose intimate associations with the State's 
dominant men were exceptional and his interest in anti- 
slavery propaganda alert and active, states, "Both parties are 
in the fog now [February, 1907] as to who will get the nom- 
ination for the next presidential election ; it was just so in 
1859-60. Things were very much mixed and confused." 1 
Doctor Salter but re-eehoes the editorial expression of a keen 
observer in those days, Mr. Charles Aldrich, in The Hamilton 
Freeman, April 21, 1860: "It is proverbially the darkest 
just before day. . . . The great Conventions of the 
three parties are on the point of assemblying and yet at no 
time during the past twelve months have the indications of 
their actions been more confused and indistinct. And it is 



i Citations above, except first, from letters to the writer. 



—36— 

plain that the wise heads at Washington are fully as much 
in the dark about the prospects as the people in Aroostook." 

Mr. Aldrich's observations were not only aptly put but 
accurate. In August, 1859, Congressman James M. Ashley, 
of Toledo, traveled in various States to ascertain the chances 
of Gov. Salmon P. Chase for securing the nomination, and he 
informed Charles A. Dana, then associate editor of The New 
York Tribune, that "the Northwest is quite as much for 
Chase as for Seward," but Dana wrote to J. S. Pike that he 
had "the best information to the contrary, particularly from 
Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Indiana, where the Germans 
who hold the balance of power, are hot Seward men." 1 The 
New York Herald, on March 7, 1860, in forecasting the result 
at Chicago gave Iowa's entire vote to Cameron, and on May 
16th its columns contained two dispatches from Chicago, one 
dated May 11th, asserting that "Minnesota and Iowa are for 
Seward," and the other, May 15th, declaring that a majority 
of the delegates of Iowa would go to Lincoln. In Greeley's 
Tribune, May 15th, the day preceding the Convention, its 
Chicago advices were ' ' Iowa is discordant and uncertain. ' ' 

When Iowa was called on the first ballot for the nomination 
for President, Friday morning, May 18, 1860, the immense 
throng in the Wigwam was in a state of intense expectancy. 
William H. Seward, contrary to expectation, had received 
only 147 1 /2 votes, and Abraham Lincoln 100 votes, more than 
twice the number received by any of his competitors. The 
votes of the Hawkeyes, though few, were important, as their 
state was known to be within the sphere of doubtful territory, 
possession of which was essential to the party's success in the 
ensuing election. Mr. Wm. Penn Clarke, a lawyer and leader, 
of Iowa City, whose fame exceeded the borders of the State, 
arose as chairman to announce the vote of the delegation. He 
essayed to speak, but not a word was forthcoming. His effort 
was obvious but vain. The delegation sat by in astonishment 
and general wonderment began to be manifest. It was soon 
realized that Mr. Clarke was suffering from an impediment in 
his speech that was serious only when he was laboring under 
great excitement. Perceiving that utterance would be futile 

i Pike's First Blows of the Civil War, p. 443. 



—37— 

or painful, a delegate came to his relief and announced that 
Iowa gave one vote each to Edward Bates of Missouri, Simon 
Cameron of Pennsylvania, Salmon P. Chase and John Mc- 
Lean, both of Ohio, two votes to Abraham Lincoln, of Illi- 
nois, and two votes to William H. Seward, of New York. 1 Each 
of Iowa 's votes represented the concurrent preferences of four 
delegates, as her delegation numbered thirty-two. 

This division of her vote among six candidates was note- 
worthy. No other northern or free State parcelled out its 
vote so variously as did Iowa. Connecticut, New Hamp- 
shire, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island gave their votes to four 
candidates on the first roll call; all other States to three can- 
didates or less. In three of the States mentioned the chances 
of victory for the Republicans in the Fall campaign were far 
from certain. It is interesting to note, and significant withal, 
that one southern or slave State, Kentucky, on the same ballot, 
gave her thirty-three votes to six candidates, favoring four 
that Iowa did, but voting for Wade and Sumner instead of 
Bates and Cameron. On the second ballot, Iowa gave her vote 
to four candidates, Chase, Lincoln, McLean and Seward; and 
on the third and decisive ballot, the delegation was still di- 
vided — Chase received x /2 vote, Lincoln 5y 2 , and Seward 2 
votes. 

Such marked and persistent division among Iowa's men 
must have reflected not only lack of harmony, due to stubborn 
personal preferences of the delegates, but sharp factional dis- 
sensions in the party's ranks in Iowa. Or that distribution of 
votes may be looked upon as evidence of the tactics of trading 
politicians, maneuvering for position so as to insure favor 
from the successful champion. However Iowa's action may 
be considered, we cannot realize its significance until we ap- 
preciate the people and the politics of the State whence the 
delegation hailed; for, even if trading was their primary 
concern, politicians seldom act in such a wise as to run seri- 
ously athwart the inclinations of their constituents, since Suc- 
cess is the deity they are wont to worship. This fact is usu- 
ally overlooked by academic historians as well as by ordinary 
lay chroniclers. 

i Interview with Mr. Charles C. Nourse. 



—38- 

Antecedent conditions as well as causes control results in 
politics ; factions no less than factors ; popular prejudices as 
much as persons. The action of Iowa's delegation at Chicago 
was an issue of the character, traditions and local interests of 
the people they represented. Iowa had been a State but 
fourteen years. Her corporate existence did not span a quar- 
ter of a century. Her population, consequently, was made up 
of pioneers. Public opinion among them consisted largely of 
the keen predilections or prejudices of their ancestral stocks, 
modified somewhat by the conditions of life in a frontier State. 
This complex of local prejudices and interests, together with 
the composition and strength of the political parties, must be 
understood if we are to appreciate correctly Iowa's action at 
Chicago. As neither the facts nor their significance has ever 
been directly pointed out, the conditions and various phases 
of the politics of Iowa in the formative days of the Republican 
party, prior to the pre-convention campaign of 1860, will be 
exhibited with considerable detail. 

1. Abolitionists Aggressive but not Dominant. 

The stand taken by Iowa, or rather by many of her men of 
"light and leading," against the aggressions of the Slavocrats 
between 1850 and 1860 has created the notion that abolitionism 
generally prevailed throughout the State. This belief is mani- 
fest in Major S. H. M. Byers' stirring account, John Brown 
in Iowa} "His career during those Kansas days," we are 
told, "was watched in Iowa as no other State. . . . Iowa 
afforded him his first refuge place after contest. ... It 
was across her prairies and past her loyal towns he wandered 
by day and by night carrying liberty for the oppressed. . . 
He was so often and so closely connected with the State 
that people almost forgot that he was not an Iowa man. ' ' 2 
Von Hoist seems to give warrant for such an opinion when he 
says of the elections of 1854 : ' ' Iowa hitherto a veritable hot- 
bed of dough-faces now reinforced the little band of 'aboli- 
tionists' in the Senate by Harlan." 3 



i Byers' Iowa in War Times, ch. 1. 

2 lb., p. 18. 

3 History, Vol. V, p. 78. 



—39— 

Sundry facts give color and substance to such a belief. Fore- 
most, perhaps, has been the prominent roles played by New 
Englanders and New Yorkers in the development of the State. 
In polities there have been few more important factors than 
Fitz Henry Warren, James W. Grimes, John A. Kasson, Jo- 
siah B. Grinnell, Nathaniel B. Baker, Judges Asahel W. and 
Nathaniel M. Hubbard, John H. Gear, William Larrabee and 
Horace Boies. In the courts Charles Mason, Stephen Whicher 
and Francis Springer, Austin Adams and John F. Dillon, 
stand out. In railway construction Grenville M. Dodge and 
Peter A. Dey are pre-eminent. In journalism Charles Al- 
drieh, Coker F. Clarkson, Clark Dunham, A. B. F. Hildreth, 
Frank W. Palmer, and Jacob Rich have been conspicuous ; and 
in education and religious life Father Asa Turner and the 
"Iowa Band," George F. Magoun, Samuel A. Howe, Josiah 
L. Piekard, A. S. Welch and Henry Sabin loom up. Not all 
who came out of Yankeedom were abolitionists by any means, 
but abolitionism flourished most vigorously in New England 
and in the other States westward, peopled largely by her 
emigrant citizens. Furthermore, if not abolitionists in the 
strict sense of the term, they were almost certain to be stout 
opponents of the extension of slavery northward beyond the 
bounds set by the Ordinance of 1787 and the Compromise 
of 1820. 

In the first decision rendered in 1839 by the territorial su- 
preme court of Iowa, Chief Justice Charles Mason, speaking 
for the court, declared that the great Ordinance and the 
Compromise worked a forfeiture of rights in rem in human 
kind within the State of Iowa — and squarely announced that 
''when the slave owner illegally restrains a human being of 
his liberty, it is proper that the laws . . . should exert 
their remedial interposition." 1 The Court realized the vital 
import of their holding — especially as they observe that its 
consideration was "not strictly regular" — but as the case 
involved "an important question which may ere long, if un- 
settled, become an exciting one," they so decreed. In 1859 
Judge Taney reversed Judsre Mason in the case of Dred Scott. 



i Iowa Reports, Vol. I, pp. 6-10. 



—40— 

There were .soon numerous underground railway routes 
through Iowa — main lines, branches and spurs. Southern of- 
ficers and slave catchers found their rights under the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law nullified by Iowa's "law breakers." Governor 
Grimes himself wrote Mrs. Grimes concerning the first case in 
Burlington, namely the seizure and trial of the slave "Dick," 
June 23, 1855 : "lam sorry I am Governor of the State, for, 
although I can and shall prevent the State authorities and 
officers from interfering in aid of the Marshal, yet if not in 
office, I am inclined to think I should be a law breaker. . . . 
Judge [later Governor] Lowe was brought from Keokuk 
Monday in the night, and a writ of habeas corpus was ready 
to be served if the decision went against us." 1 Fitz Henry 
Warren exhibited a willingness to take the law into his own 
hands in that affair. 2 The exaltation of such leaders as 
Grimes and Harlan, the practical support of John Brown and 
his men, 3 Governor Kirkwood's ringing message on the Bar- 
clay Coppoc affair, the extraordinary enlistments of Iowa's 
sons in the Union army — all these facts seem to indicate that 
abolitionism was rampant in Iowa in those troublesome times. 
The careers of some of Iowa's delegates to Chicago in 1860 
confirm the notion that abolitionism was prevalent. The 
chairman of the delegation — Mr. William Penn Clarke — early 
acquired fame or infamy as a "nigger worshipper." 4 In 
1850 he received 575 votes from the Abolitionists for Gover- 
nor. He was a conductor on the Underground Railway. 
During the warfare in Kansas he openly and effectively as- 
sisted Eli Thayer and Col. T. W. Higginson in transporting 
"Liberty" men and Sharpe's rifles to Tabor to protect the 



1 Salter's Grimes, pp. 72-73. 

2 lb., p. 73. Mr. George Frazee, Commissioner of the Court to hear the 
case, practically asserts that both Governor Grimes and Colonel Warren 
Were "principal movers" in gathering "the crowd of sympathizers with the 
unfortunate fugitive." The abolitionist who was aiding "Dick" to escape 
was a New Englander, the celebrated botanist and historian of the Long 
Expedition, Dr. Edwin James, then living a few miles west of Burlington. 
See Frazee's article, "The Iowa Fugitive Slave Case," Annals, Vol. IV, 
118-137. 

3 Brown's company for Harper's Ferry was organized and drilled at 
Springdale, Iowa. Iowa furnished more men than any other State. See 
Gue's History of Iowa, Vol. II, p. 2. 

4 Upon the occasion of Mr. Clarke's failure to make his appointment 
to speak in the campaign of 1848 The Gate City observes: "Wm. Penn 
Clarke, candidate on the "codfish and cabbage ticket," concluded to skip 
our city in his tour of love for the darkies." (October 26, 1848.) 



SOME OF IOWA'S DELEGATES 
Chicago Convention, May 16-18, 1860 




WM. P. HEPBURN, 
U. S. Representative 



CHARLES C. NOURSE, 
Attorney- General of Iowa 



WM. PENN CLARKE, 
Supreme Court Reporter 

HENRY O'CONNOR, 
Attorney-General of Iowa 



—41— 

freedom of the New England emigrants beyond the Missouri. 
In the Constitutional Convention of 1857 the irrepressible 
champion of the proposal to strike "white" from the supreme 
statute of Iowa and grant the electoral franchise to negroes 
was a doughty New Englander, R. L. B. Clarke of Mt. Pleas- 
ant, Senator Harlan's home town. On the hustings another 
valiant champion of that measure was a dashing, brilliant 
son of Erin, Henry O'Connor of Muscatine, "the best Repub- 
lican stump speaker in the State. ' ' 1 Mr. Jacob Butler, like- 
wise of Muscatine, was another "Abolitionist" whose flag was 
up and his work on the Underground Railway known ; 2 like 
his law partner, O'Connor, he, too, was regarded as one of 
"the ablest and most popular speakers in the state." 3 An- 
other Abolitionist in the delegation was the Rev. John Johns of 
Border Plains, "Webster county, of whom more later. All five 
of those men "died in the ditch" at Chicago, voting for "Wm. 
H. Seward for President. 

The delegation contained at least three other "Black" 
Republicans of the notorious species, all of them trainmen on 
the Underground Railway : a State Senator, M. L. McPherson, 
then of Winterset, 4 Mr. H. M. Hoxie of Des Moines, who 
had been an expert as to the best time and route for shipping 
' ' fleeces of wool ' ' 5 and was then secretary of the Repub- 
lican State Central Committee ; and Mr. J. B. Grinnell, whose 
home in Grinnell was a way-station where "old Brown's" 
chattels were rebilled and trans-shipped. 6 John Brown wrote 
a part of his Harper's Ferry proclamation to the Virginians 
while at Mr. Grinnell 's home. 7 

The forwardness of New Englanders in radical anti-slavery 
propaganda was shown at the annual session of the State 
Congregational Association in 1859. A resolution was passed 
June 2d expressing sympathy with brethren under arrest 



i Dubuque Express and Herald, September 3, 1858 : See also editorial in 
The Democratic Enquirer, Muscatine, October 7, 1858, under caption 
"Henry O'Connor is in Favor of Negro Suffrage." 

2 Byers' Iowa in War Times, p. 20. 

3 The Hamilton Freeman, September 24, 1858. 

4 History of Madison county, p. 353. 

5 J. B. Grinnell's Men and Events of Forty Years, p. 217. 

6 lb., pp. 210-220. 

7 Byers, lb., p. 24 ; also Grinnell, lb., p. 214. 



—42— 

in Ohio on account of their resistance to the Fugitive Slave 
Law, "an unchristian enactment" ; bidding them "be courage- 
ous in enduring wrong," as their martyrdom would "call out 
and increase the humane and Christian opposition ... to 
the whole system of American Slavery, with all its attendant 
evils, whether established by the Ge^cnl Government, sanc- 
tioned by the Supreme Court, or enforced by Federal Of- 
ficers. " 1 It further called for the raising of funds to aid the 
martyrs. The resolution was deftly worded, so as to avoid ex- 
plicit encouragement of law breaking but the Association was 
sharply criticized ; the Dubuque Express and Herald per- 
tinently asking, "How can such a body of men find fault with 
any other body, whether composed of religionists or not, who 
may urge resistance to a law which they dislike. ' ' 2 

The most vigorous type of abolitionism within the regular 
Republican party organization developed or "broke out" in 
Muscatine county — a county that has produced many lusty 
radicals in the course of its history. In the mass convention in 
Muscatine, January 7, 1860, to select their delegation to the 
Republican State Convention, in Des Moines, to choose the 
delegates to Chicago, the committee on resolutions "recom- 
mended" Helper's Impending Crisis as a book "eminently 
worthy of an extensive circulation in this county." Coming 
close on the heels of the executions at Harper's Ferry in which 
Iowa was but too closely involved, the Convention could have 
exceeded its display of belligerent radicalism only by com- 
mending Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, for the burden of 
Helpers' book was "Slavery Must be Abolished." 3 Such an 
action, as may be imagined, did not pass without comment. 
The attitude of Iowa in the great political contest then ap- 
proaching was a matter of national interest for her political 
complexion was by no means clear or dependable. A corres- 
pondent of the New York Herald visited the State to determine 
the drifts of sentiment, his visit coinciding with the discussion 
pursuant to the Muscatine Resolutions. Writing from Iowa 
City, January 27th, he says : 

i See Proceedings in Muscatine Journal, June 6, 1859. 

2 Dubuque Express and Herald, June 10, 1859. 

3 "As much was now said [1859] and written about Helper's 'Impending- 
Crisis' as formerly about "Uncle Tom's Cabin' ; as much but in a different 
way," etc. Von Hoist, VII, p. 8. 



—43— 

Next to Michigan, Iowa is the most completely and thoroughly 
abolitionized State in the Northwest; it is therefore not surprising that 
Brown here found practical exponents of Sewardism, or that Helper 
finds champions in the deliberative councils of the rulers of the State. 
Whatever dodges the Eepublican party elsewhere may resort to to cover 
their participation directly or indirectly with Brown's attack on Harper's 
Ferry or shield themselves from complicity with the circulation of 
Helper's book, the Republicans of Iowa feel themselves strong enough 
to throw off the mask and boldly avow their sympathy with the one 
and their approval of the other. . . . This [action at Muscatine] 
is the first public endorsement of the book I have yet heard of; but I 
have yet to meet with the first Republican here or elsewhere who has 
read the book who does not endorse it and recommend its circulation.! 

That the foregoing was a veracious report of impressions 
received we need not doubt, but the correspondent's conclus- 
ions as to the prevalence and potency of abolitionism in Iowa 
or among Iowa's Republicans in 1860 are not to be accepted. 
The Abolitionists made up a very considerable company in 
respect of ability, character and courage, but they did not pre- 
ponderate, even in the Republican party, let alone in the State. 
They were, in the language of our military experts, out- 
flankers and skirmishers, or better, a flying squadron of re- 
markable efficiency, but they were not the main body of troops. 
The mass of the Republicans were strongly anti-slavery in 
sentiment and theory, but hostile only to the extension of 
slavery north of Mason and Dixon's line, the Ohio river and 
36° 30'. They were not clamorous for abolition in States where 
slavery was fixed or formal. 2 There was no favorable echo of 
the resolution of the Muscatine Republicans so far as the 
writer can discover, either in the press or in party conven- 
tions. 

But while Abolitionists, as we shall see, did not prevail 
in the State at large or predominate in the Republican 
party, their affiliation with the Republicans and their activity 
in propaganda put on the party the onus and odium thence re- 
sulting. The Democratic press of Iowa teems with screaming 



1 New York Herald, February 19, 1860. 

2 In the debate, February 23, 1857, on the proposal to strike "White" 
from the State constitution, Mr. Wm. Penn Clarke in repelling the charge 
that his party was fathering abolitionism, said : "I understand the doctrine 
of the republican party to be opposition to the extension of slavery." 
Debates of the Constitutional Convention, vol. II, p. 675. 



—44— 

epithets: "Abolitionist," "Amalgamationists," "Miscegena- 
tionists," "Black Republicans," "Freedom Shriekers," "Nig- 
ger Thieves," "Nigger Worshippers," "Woolies," hurtle 
through their pages ad nauseam. Their editors see frightful 
visions of "white and negro equality." 1 The organ of 
Buchanan's administration, The Washington (D. C.) Union, 
pronounced Senator Harlan's sober presentation of the north's 
objections to the aggressions of the southern leaders in the 
Senate, March 27, 1856, "an elaborate defence of abolitionism" 
and declared the "one great object" in his speech to be to 
establish "equality between the two races." 2 The Republi- 
can leaders of Iowa were more or less indifferent to such flouts 
and taunts. Nevertheless one perceives an extreme sensitive- 
ness to such accusations — the rank and file and most of the 
leaders constantly declare their hostility to abolitionism. Not 
only were they sensitive concerning the charge of abolitionism 
but the dominant men of the party realized that the potent 
fact chiefly determining the continuance or cessation of Re- 
publican supremacy in Iowa was no less dread of abolitionism 
than dread of slavery. This was a basic condition and assidu- 
ous attention thereto was imperative. The reason therefor, 
arose out of the ancestry of Iowa's population which we must 
understand if we are to realize the significance of the conduct 
of Iowa in the great Council in the Wigwam. 

2. Southern Stocks and Prejudices Predominant. 
The immigration prior to 1850 came chiefly from south of 
Mason and Dixon's line and the Ohio river. Between 1850 
and 1860 the settlers hailed mostly from southern portions of 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, the major number 
of which were either natives of, or descendants of pioneer 
emigrants from slave States who in their northern habitats 
were by trade closely affiliated with the southern peoples. 
There was at the same time a strong infusion of energetic 
northern stocks from New England and New York, and of 
their westernized descendants from northern portions of Penn- 
sylvania and Ohio, and from Michigan and Wisconsin. The 
influx of the northerners reached high tide between 1855 and 

i See editorial in Express and Herald, Dubuque, September 3, 1858. 
2 Quoted in Iowa Democratic Enquirer, Muscatine, April 10, 1856. 



-45- 

1860. It is the popular notion that the latter elements pre- 
dominated in Iowa prior to 1860 ; and, it is true, they were the 
energizing forces and aggressive factors in public discussion 
and in the "forward" or progressive movements of those days, 
both in industry and politics. But they did not constitute the 
preponderant political population. 1 

Coincident with the incoming of the native Americans was 
a heavy immigration into Iowa of foreign born peoples, mostly 
Germans and Irish. In 1850 the native born inhabitants con- 
stituted 89 per cent, of the aggregate population and in 1860 
they had declined to 84.2 per cent. Of the 21,232 foreign 
born in 1850, the Germans made up 7,152 and the Irish 4,885, 
both together constituting 56 per cent, of the total. In 1860 
the Irish numbered 28,072 and the Germans 38,555, making 
63 per cent, of the 106.081 foreign born citizens. The total 
population of Iowa in 1860 numbered only 674,913. It is 
manifest that if the political party in power in Iowa had a 
narrow margin of popular support the foreign immigrants 
could easily control the fate of the predominant party if, for 
any reason, the foreign born citizens were clannish and were 
aggravated into political concert by threatened partizan action 
adverse to their welfare. 

The geographical and industrial distribution of the popula- 
tion was a potent factor in the politics of the ante helium 
period. Speaking generally, the settlers of southern anteced- 
ents, although scattered thickly in the northern counties, pre- 
vailed in the southern half of the State and in the interior and 
western counties. For the most part they were farmers, much 
given to hunting and trapping and but comparatively little to 
commercial or manufacturing pursuits. They lived along the 
streams and in the wooded lands and pursued farming in an 
easy-going fashion. The Yankees, on the other hand, were 
found mainly in the northern and eastern counties, inhabiting 
the cities and towns, pre-eminent in the advancement of educa- 
tion, especially in promoting schools and colleges, following 
commercial and industrial pursuits, or farming the uplands or 



l In The Annals, Vol. VII, pp. 367-379, 440-465, April and July, 1906, the 
writer has set forth some facts in justification of the assertions above — 
reprinted with additions under caption Did Emigrants from New England 
First Settle Iowa. 



—46— 



prairies with the latest devices in agricultural machinery. 
The foreign born population for the most part inhabited the 
counties bordering on the Mississippi. They were more 
numerous relatively in the northern counties than in the 
southern. Thus in 1850 the foreigners in Dubuque county 
constituted 40 and in 1860 42 per cent, of the population, 
whereas in Des Moines county (containing Burlington) they 
were only 15 and 21 per cent, for the respective decennial 
censuses. In Davis and in Dallas counties the foreign born 
amounted in each county to but 3 per cent. Even in Polk 
county, with the capital city, the native born made up 90 
per cent, of the population. 1 

The political, religious and social animosities and prejudices 
of such a mixed population under the conditions of intercom- 
munication of those days were in the nature of things lively 
and various, and usually stubborn if not violent. The primary 
prejudices of the native stocks related to slavery. Their 
secondary prejudices pertained to the foreign immigrant. 

The people of southern antecedents had left the south main- 
ly for two reasons. Either economic pressure or hostility to 
slavery, or both, had induced them to emigrate. The major 
number had come north to better their economic condition. 
Many would have brought slaves with them had their owner- 
ship and control been feasible. A large proportion were not 



i Below are given the returns of nativity for six counties on the 
sissippi and for six counties bordering on the Des Moines river for 
and i860 : 


Mis- 
1850 




1850 


1860 


Counties 


> 

cd 
Z 

# 


a 

u 
o 


a so 

U O 

dJVH 

Ph 


> 


a 

M 

'S3 
u 
o 


♦j a 
a 6o 

fc.O 

(D»-c 


Dubuque 


637 

6,512 
2,077 
4,452 
11,008 
16,514 
7,186 
5,885 
1,255 
4,399 
842 
C67 


140 

4,301 

525 

1,520 

1,955 

2,287 

71 

103 

25 

114 

12 

68 


18 
40 
19 
25 
15 
12 

1— 

2— 

2 

2.5 

1 

9 


8,295 
18,206 
13,565 
16,706 
15,536 
22,747 
13,296 
14,109 

9,437 
10,498 

5,082 

3,999 


3,942 

12,958 

5,373 

9,253 

4,075 

6,485 

468 

707 

4t5 

1,127 

162 

233 


32 
42 


Clinton 


28 


Scott 

Des Moines 


36 
21 


Davis 


22 
3 

5 




4.5 


Polk 


10 


Dallas 


3 


Boone - — 


5.5 


* Includes some unknown. 















—47— 

particularly concerned about the matter, but were strongly 
pro-slavery in their sympathies. The more influential and 
industrious immigrants from the south, however, were de- 
cidedly hostile to the extension of slavery, because their ad- 
versity in their ancestral States was due to the pressure of 
slavery and the severe and relentless social discrimination 
against white labor. Small farming was almost impossible in 
the south and decent and independent social existence other- 
wise was so difficult as to be virtually impossible. 1 The agita- 
tion for the extension of slavery and the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise aroused the intense antagonism of such emigrants 
in Iowa. It was this element among the southern stocks that 
joined forces with the New England folk and elected James 
W. Grimes Governor in 1854, to the utter astonishment of the 
country at large. 

Those who emigrated from the south because of personal 
hostility to slavery, were usually out-and-out Abolitionists. 
Such notably were the Friends or Quakers who for the most 
part cameinto Iowa in consiclerablenumbersdirect from Mary- 
land and North Carolina or roundabout via Ohio and Indiana. 
The Friends church at Salem in Henry county was known far 
and wide as the "Abolition Meeting House" 2 and their settle- 
ment at Springdale, as already noted, was John Brown's ren- 
dezvous, previous to his attack on Harper's Ferry. There was 
at least one representative of the Quakers on the delegation to 
Chicago, Senator M. L. McPherson of Winterset. He was a 
North Carolinian and an Abolitionist. One of the most in- 
teresting men among Iowa's delegates at Chicago was Rev. 



i The following extracts from an able speech of John Edwards of Chari- 
ton in the Constitutional Convention of 1857 illustrate the paragraph 
above : 

"I am glad that I have an opportunity here of speaking upon this 
slavery question. Born in a slave State [Virginia], educated with all the 
prejudices of a slaveholder, I have been contending for twenty years with 
the institution of slaverv. It was slavery that drove me from my native 
State." Debates, vol. II, p. 681. 

"There were iJe:t ocats in my section of the State who took the ground 
that slavery was. right; that it was a great moral and political blessing 
i.i iliac it ov.fi • it t> ije extended throughout the Union." p. 683 

". . . slavery is a foul political curse upon the institutions of our 
•ountry : it is a curse upon the soil of the country, and worse than that it 
is a curse upon the poor, free laboring white man. . . . they have been 
driven away [from Virginia] in consequence of the degradation attached 
to labor as the result of this system of slavery. That is the reason that 
\i fi ii is becoming ^enopulated. . . ". p. 682. 

See also speech of George Ells of Davenport, March 2, p. 907. 

2 See testimony and arguments of attorneys in "An Iowa Fugitive shin 
Case " Annals, VI, pp. 16, 27, 30-31. 



—48— 

John Johns of Border Plains, Webster county. He was a 
native of Kentucky, an old line Whig, a Free Will Baptist 
preacher and an Abolitionist. From his youth he had stead- 
fastly promulgated his views, at camp-meetings and on the 
hustings, alike, in Ohio and Indiana before coming to Iowa 
in 1848. 

But Abolitionists were extremists and did not dominate in 
Iowa's southern stock. The preponderant number was hostile 
alike to the extension of slavery and to its abolition and the 
resulting Negro Equality involved or dreaded. "We hated an 
abolitionist as we hated a nigger," wrote a pioneer preacher 
of Iowa to the writer a short time since. 1 Grimes was keenly 
alive to this stubborn prejudice in 1854 when he sought the 
suffrages of the people in his candidacy for Governor. He 
took pains to guard against the imputations of his opponents 
to the effect that he would echo "the mad-dog cry of abolition- 
ism." 2 The heated debates in the Constitutional Convention 
of 1857, over the admissibility of the testimony of negroes in 
courts, their rights to property, their admission to the State 
and the Franchise, show us how deeply rooted and potent were 
the prejudices of the southerners in Iowa's public opinion. 
The proposal to strike "white" from the Constitution and thus 
admit the negro to the Franchise was overwhelmingly defeated 
at the polls. It obtained a majority in but two thinly settled 
counties, Humboldt and Mitchell, the former near and the 
latter on the border of Minnesota and the latter over fifty miles 
back from the river; receiving approximately, in the State at 
large only 14,000 votes out of 64,000 cast. 3 

The numbers and political significance of the southern stocks 
is indicated forcefully in the following observations of Daniel 
F. Miller a Marylander, who played a conspicuous part in 
the pioneer politics of Iowa from 1839 to 1860, being the first 



1 The correspondent quoted above, was born in Newark, Ohio, near 
the center of the State. His parents were Virginians. He told the writer 
once that he had almost attained his majority before he began to realize 
that people were or could be born elsewhere than in Virginia, if not in Ohio. 

2 Salter's Grimes, p. 49. 

s The exact figures cannot be given as the returns from some of the 
counties seem to be incomplete. See "Record of Elections" on file in the 
office of the Sec. of State. 



—49— 

Whig Congressman from southern Iowa, 1 one of the organizers 
of the Republican party and the party's first Presidential 
elector in the campaign of 1856. His communication was 
indited near the close of the Fremont campaign. 

When you are informed, sir, that full one-third of all the voters in 
this (Hall's 2 ) district were born in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North 
Carolina, and other slave holding States, and that in fact, a very large 
majority of this portion of our voters are the most ardent and active 
Eepublicans, and fought best for the defeat of Hall, you will be able to 
properly appreciate how much of the non-slaveholding portion of the 
South hate the extension of slavery, and will speak out their sentiments 
on the subject where they can do it with safety. Having come to Iowa 
to enjoy the blessings of free labor and progressive industry and by 
experience learned how superior are Free Institutions to those of 
Slavery, we never can nor will consent, but oppose to the bitter 
end, every effort of the Slave Oligarchy to extend Slavery over our 
Sister Kansas. The Missouri Compromise was the common charter 
of Freedom for both Iowa and Kansas, and, though the letter of it has 
been violated as to Kansas, you may rest assured we will maintain the 
equity and spirit of it at all hazards.3 

Three instances of the potency of southern prejudices in 
Iowa's politics in ante helium days may be cited because they 
exhibit in an interesting fashion the practical consideration 
given them by some of the men who played prominent roles 
not only in the struggles between 1856 and 1860 but at 
Chicago. Mr. Charles C. Nourse, a Marylander by birth, was 
one of the original advocates of Abraham Lincoln's nomina- 
tion among the Iowa Delegation, and he ascribes the original 
impetus to his career in State politics to the adverse prejudices 
of the southern stock in Iowa. In an interview with the 
writer, he says: "In 1852 I was elected county prosecutor 
of Van Buren county as a Whig. In 1854 I was renominated. 
The Free Soilers were numerous enough in the north half of 
the county to cause the Convention to put a Free Soiler by 
the name of French on the ticket. For several reasons I was 
strong enough to win on my own strength, but my friends soon 
told me that I could not carry the Free Soiler along with me. 

i Wm. H. Thompson. Democrat, was first seated, the canvassing board 
having excluded the Mormon vote of Kanesville, which Fitz Henry Warren 
had secure 1 for the Whigs : Miller contested, the election was voided, and 
at a snecial election Miller regained his seat. 

2 Augustus Hall. 

a The St. Charles Intelligencer, October 2. 1856. 
4 



—50— 

You see a great number of the people of Davis and Van Buren 
counties had moved to Iowa when they supposed that region 
was a part of Missouri. In the contest over the boundary, the 
decision was largely in our favor. The fact that those south- 
erners were in Iowa, did not, however, reconstruct their notions 
or ways of thinking. A Free Soiler to them was an abolition- 
ist — an equal suffragist who proposed to force on us negro 
equality, both political and social. I worked manfully on be- 
half of French but I could not disabuse their minds and I 
was beaten. It was my defeat that induced my friends to 
make me Clerk of the House of Representatives in 1854 as a 
sort of compensation or consolation prize." 1 

Mr. John A. Kasson, although a New Englander, had spent 
six years in law practice in St. Louis, 1851-57, before coming 
to Iowa (hence his prior preference for Judge Bates for Presi- 
dent in 1860). His political sagacity and capacity for gen- 
eralship were so soon exhibited that in 1858, he was made 
chairman of the Republican State Central Committee. In the 
gubernatorial canvass of 1859 he planned an extended itin- 
erary for Kirkwood in the counties of southern Iowa and 
writing him July 18th, about the pitfalls to be avoided and 
local prejudices to be dealt with, he advised: "You are 
doubtless informed that the population of the southern tier 
[of counties] generally, commencing with Davis and Wapello 
and west, embrace people from southern Illinois, Indiana, 
Ohio, some from Kentucky and Maryland, a few from Ten- 
nessee. . . . Those people are generally scared at the 
idea of abolitionism, particularly in Davis, Appanoose, 
Decatur and Wayne. It will be well for you to run your 
Maryland birth a little down there and to pitch into Democ- 
racy, the real agitators of the slavery question who have 
thrust it upon the country perpetually since 1844, and have 
refused to leave it quiet in any part of the country not even 
north of 36:30." 2 

Six months later the correspondent of Horace Greeley's 
Tribune writing from Des Moines (Jan. 9, 1860) concerning 

i Interview with Mr. Nourse, Ibid. 

2 The citations above and others subsequently given unless otherwise 
stated are to be found chiefly in MSS., correspondence, memoranda and 
newspaper files in the Aldrich Collections of the State Historical Depart- 
ment at Des Moines. 



—51— 

Governor Kirkwood's Inaugural Address, a copy of which 
he had secured in advance of the delivery, observes : ' ' His 
remarks on the John Brown matter are satisfactory and are 
all that could be expected from a Marylander by birth; a 
Democrat by association up to 1854, and a successful can- 
vasser before the people His sentiments, I think, 

are reflective of the tone of feeling in the northwest in the 
Republican party." 

3. The Clash of Native and Foreign Prejudices. 

The prejudices of the native born population adverse to 
the foreign born immigrant developed mainly in three forms : 
First, dread lest the foreigner should gain undue power in 
politics, and promote his interests at the expense of the gen- 
eral welfare; second, antagonism to the doctrines and prac- 
tices of the Catholic church ; and third, opposition to liberty 
or license in the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors as 
beverages. In such matters human nature is so constituted 
that if greatly aroused race prejudice, religious fanaticism 
and extreme measures for social reform engender fierce 
animosities that sweep aside equity, logic and law and utterly 
disconcert politicians calculating the force and direction of 
the normal currents in the spheres of human interest. 

KNOW-NOTHINGISM AND THE REPUBLICANS. 

There seems to be a general opinion that the Know-Nothing 
or American movement, that incorporated the native prej- 
udice against foreigners in the older eastern and southern 
States in the fourth and fifth decades of the last century, 
did not seriously affect Iowa. Discussing the significance of 
Grimes' success in 1854, Mr. Rhodes says: "The Know- 
Nothing wave had not reached Iowa." 1 Recently a writer 
has told us: "The American party reached the zenith of its 
power and influence [in Iowa] in 1855;" 2 and, again, "The 
passing of Know-Nothingism from the political stage is closely 
associated with the origin of the Republican party" 3 (at Iowa 
City February 22, 1856). Governor Grimes' vigorous decla- 

i Rhodes' History. lb., Vol. II, p. 59. 

2 Mr. Louis Pelzer, "The Origin and Organization of the Republican 
Party in Iowa," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, Vol. IV, 495. 

3 lb., p. 503. 



—52— 

ration at Burlington in January, 1856, that "Anti-Know- 
Nothingism and Anti-Slavery must be two great planks of 
the Republican organization ' ' l and other like expressions 
from him are cited to indicate that Know-Nothingism was 
not supreme in politics in Iowa as it was in States of the 
east and the south. Such a conclusion, however, while justi- 
fied in considerable measure seriously misleads as to the prev- 
alence and force of Know-Nothingism in Iowa during its 
flow and ebb in the country at large. There is reason for 
thinking that the tide of anti-foreign feeling overflowed into 
Iowa between 1852 and 1856 with some vigor. 2 The events 
precede too much the period in which we are immediately 
concerned to justify their recital here, but the receding waves 
disturbed very decidedly the currents of party strife in Iowa 
and constituted one of the decisive factors, in the writer's 
judgment, in bringing about the nomination of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

The anti-foreign influence in party politics in Iowa and the 
anxiety of the politicians respecting its force and manifesta- 
tion were pronounced up to the outbreak of the Civil War. 
Editors and politicians, then, as now, expressed views publicly 
that indicated what they wanted or thought ought to be rather 
than what they thought actually was the case. The acts and 
the private conversation and correspondence of the political 
leaders spoke louder than formal words designed to hold or 
attract the doubtful voter or delude the opposition. They 
show us that political forces of great potency may operate 
effectually and yet not receive much public recognition such 
as ceremonial consideration in conventions in the way of 
party resolutions and tickets. Moreover, the dread of an 
indefinite, unpretentious but prevalent and perverse force 



1 lb., p. 504. 

2 Col. Joseph Eiboeck, editor since 1874 of Der Iowa Staats Anzeiger of 
Des Moines, spent his youth in Dubuque between 1849 and 1859. In a 
statement (MSS. ) given the writer, August 12, 1907, after describing a 
physical encounter between the editor of The Express and Herald and the 
postmaster of Dubuque, also editor of The Observer, a paper devoted to 
Know- *» othittgism Co onel Eiboeck says of 'evelopments in that city: 
"But the Know Nothing days were stormy ones. In 1853 and '4 there was 
scarcely a day but fist fights and rows between Know Nothing rowdies 
and German and Irish born citizens took place. Every house in which a 
foreign born citizen lived was chalked with an X and thus marked far 
espionage and persecution, those of Irish and German Catholics in par- 
ticular." 



—53— 

disturbs all calculations producing sharp reactions within 
party lines, to the distraction and woe of party organizers. 

Politicians and political parties indicate their perplexity 
as to the best course to pursue respecting an "issue" that 
burns in the public mind as much by silence as by public 
pronouncement thereupon or deft or timid reference thereto. 
In 1855 the Democrats of Iowa spoke out plumply against 
the anti-foreign propaganda, denouncing the attempts to re- 
strict the rights of naturalized citizens and bespeaking re- 
sistance similar to that accorded the Alien and Sedition laws. 1 
The Whigs were silent. At the formal organization of the 
Republican party at Iowa City, February 22, 1856, there was 
again silence. Silence upon that subject was essential to 
success but it did not allay the suspicions of the Germans. 
Mr. L. Mader, editor of Die Freie Presse of Burlington had 
joined the original chorus of calls for the organization of an 
anti-slavery party in Iowa. Nevertheless the Germans found 
the Convention far from congenial. 2 Their resolution de- 
claring in favor of the naturalization laws then in force was 
refused consideration, notwithstanding Governor Grimes 
favored it. 3 The result was that they withdrew from the 
Convention. Three or four days later, Mr. Mader with 
Theodore Guelich, editor of Der Demokrat of Davenport, and 
J. Bittman, editor of Die Stoats Zeitung of Dubuque, jointly 
issued a formal letter to their fellow countrymen in the 
State, exposing the treatment they had received and urging 
opposition to the new party until it was purged of its malev- 
olent elements. 4 This episode has not been considered as 
significant or serious because of the predominant influence of 
Governor Grimes in giving color, tone and direction to the 
growth of the Republican party. It was, nevertheless, in- 
dicative of a high degree of discontent and suspiciousness 
among the foreign population, which did not disappear until 
the clash of arms on Southern Battle-fields demonstrated that 



1 See Platform Section 7 : Fairall's Manual of Iowa Politics, Vol. I, p. 39. 

2 See letter of "Germania" in The Iowa Democratic Enquirer (Musca- 
tine), March 13, 1S56. 

3 See Grimes' letter to Salmon P. Chase, March 28, 1856, Salter's Grimes, 
pp. 79-80. 

i Daily Journal, Muscatine, March 17, 1856. 



—54— 

love of the stars and stripes was a common impulse alike of 
scions of Cavalier and Puritan and sons of Erin and Ger- 
mania. 1 

Governor Grimes lived in Burlington where Germans were 
both numerous and justly influential; and although he recog- 
nized that the partisans of American exclusiveness had real 
grievances in some of the eastern States and were a beneficent 
force in breaking up the old party alignments that had be- 
come irrelevant as respects the great issue of slavery, he 
fairly abominated Know-Nothingism as a principle of public 
policy. 2 But we err greatly if we conclude that his broad 
views animated or controlled all the Republican leaders of 
Iowa in those formative days. On the contrary the reverse 
is largely true of the majority of the prominent men of the 
State. Fifty miles west of the river, the Republican leaders 
and anti-slavery men were saturated with the sentiments of 
Know-Nothingism. 

In Davis county, Mr. James B. Weaver, then an active 
young lawyer of Bloomfield, first became known as an 
ardent advocate of American principles. Judge William 
Luughridge of Oskaloosa was Iowa 's member of the committee 
of correspondence of the Know-Nothings that met at Phila- 
delphia on June 15, 1855, and signed the "call" for the 
National Convention in Cincinnati, November 30, 1855. 3 R. 
L. B. Clarke of Mt. Pleasant 4 and John Edwards, editor of 
The Patriot of Chariton, were avowed Know-Nothings; 5 Mr. 
Wm. Penn Clarke, who was a delegate to the National Repub- 
lican Convention in Pittsburg in 1856, who had general charge 
of the Republican campaign in Iowa that year, and in 1860 
was the chairman of Iowa's delegation at Chicago, was a 
noteworthy leader among the Know-Nothings, being sent to 



1 The Germans of Iowa claim the honorable distinction of offering the 
first troops ("The Burlington Rifles," Christian L. Mathies, Captain) to 
aid in suppressing the threatening rebellion in January, 1861. See Eiboeck, 
Die Dutchen von Iowa, p. 84. Major Byers is not disinclined to concede 
the claim. Iowa in War Times, pp. 39-41. 

2 Concerning the Know-Nothing Convention in Iowa City, March 5th, 
Grimes wrote Clarke : "I was so disgusted with their proceedings . . . 
that I have disliked to read, talk, write, or hear about it." Burlington, 
April 3, 1856. 

3 See The Oskaloosa Herald, September 14, 1855. 

4 Debates of the Constitutional Convention, 1857, Vol. II, p. 862. 

5 lb., Vol. I, p. 187. 



—55— 

the celebrated Grand Council that met at Philadelphia on 
February 19, 1856. Wells Spicer, editor of The Tipton 
Advertiser, was a staunch American and outspoken in his 
advocacy of a policy of foreign exclusion, going so far as to 
express regret at the failure of the Americans in the Repub- 
lican Convention at Iowa City to express themselves vigor- 
ously when they had the majority to do so. Iowa probably 
never had a more acute observer and tactician or a more re- 
sourceful political leader than the late Judge N. M. Hubbard 
of Cedar Rapids. He was one of the original movers in the 
organization of the Republican party, he and Mr. C. C. Nourse 
being the secretaries of the Convention at Iowa City. Writing 
Penn Clarke, December 24, 1855, from Marion, Judge Hub- 
bard asked whether "we — republicans — had not better call 
our State Convention at the same time the K. N. 's have theirs. 
I believe a fusion is necessary and must be had." Two weeks 
later (January 9, 1856) he wrote, "If we can secure you 
[Clarke] the nomination of the Republicans (for Attorney 
General) and the other good men from the K. N.'s and Repub- 
licans about equal, can't your Convention resolve to make no 
nomination and support ours? I am satisfied unless we can 
make a union on the Nebraska question of the Republicans 
and the K. N.'s we shall all be in danger of getting our bot- 
tom knocked out . . . Let us do all possible to effect a 
fusion." Were his proposals realized? Not entirely pro 
forma but in substance and effect they were. 

The Germans, as we have seen, revolted because they felt 
that the Convention was dominated by Know-Nothings. The 
Democrats flouted the Republicans with the charge of being 
mere Know-Nothings in masquerade. 1 On March 5th, the 
American Convention of 100 delegates or representatives, met 
in Iowa City and "confirmed" the ticket agreed upon by the 
Republican Convention two weeks preceding, except that 
different national electors were nominated. 2 Mr. John Mahin 



1 Referring April 12th to Mr. Martin L. Morris, the Republican nominee 
for State Treasurer who was elected by the Democrats in 1852, The Guthrie 
Sentinel of Panora said that he owed his present nomination to "Know 
Nothing Woolies of Iowa." See also Dubuque Herald, September 18, 1859, 
editorial, German Republicans of Wisconsin and Iowa. 

2 Letter dated at Iowa City, March 6, 1856, to The Des Moines Valley 
Whig, March 12th. 



—56— 

of Muscatine on February 29th, placed "at the mast head" 
of The Journal, the American National Ticket of which he 
said, "it is the best the party could have chosen", together 
with the "Republican State Ticket" and the "American City 
Ticket." On March 15th, without comment, he removed the 
first. The Republicans however through many of the party 
organs, denied the charge o collu-io" stoutly. Th^ Cincinnati 
Times, however, declared that three out of the four nominees 
on the Republican ticket in Iowa for State officers were 
Americans. 1 The Americans became restless at the recreancy 
of the Republican press. Judge Loughridge in some indig- 
nation wrote Clarke concerning the course of the Republican 
editors : ' ' The State ticket nominated by both parties, they 
denominate the 'Republican' ticket instead of claiming, as 
the fact is, that it is a 'Union' or 'Peoples' Ticket'." He 
informs Clarke that immediately following The Oskaloosa 
Herald's declaration or pledge that Mr. S. A. Rice, the can- 
didate for Attorney General was opposed to Fillmore and a 
Republican, "the Davis County American paper took Mr. 
Rice's name from the ticket." It was, no doubt, in part 
anxiety concerning the consequences of this alleged double 
dealing and the revolts occurring or threatened, that induced 
N. M. Hubbard on March 28th to write Clarke: "What do 
you think of politics now? Are we going to unite or burst 
all up? Give me some advice. I am editing a paper. I 
hardly know what to do." On the same day, Governor 
Grimes wrote Salmon P. Chase of Ohio : ' ' The Fillmore 
nomination will damage us considerably in this State, and I 
fear will render the result doubtful. I think it will affect 
us here as much as in any other State in the Union, especially 
in the southern part, where the people are mostly southern by 
birth. ' ' 2 His anticipations were verified. 

An exceedingly interesting sign that Know-Nothingism was 
a blazing phenomenon high in the political heavens of Iowa 
in 1856, even, if it be true, that it had passed its zenith in 
1855, was the commotion produced in the ranks of the Demo- 
cratic party in March, 1856, by the public charge and sub- 



i Quoted in The Guthrie Sentinel, September 13, 1856. 
2 Salter's Grimes, p. 80. 



—57— 

stantial demonstration that George W. McCleary, then Secre- 
tary of State, was a member of a Know-Nothing Lodge in 
good standing. He was a popular official, and a prospective 
candidate for renomination, with no serious opposition ap- 
parent. The exposure seems to have paralyzed him and dazed 
his party friends, for he soon formally announced that for 
sundry reasons he would not be a candidate for re-election, 
and thanked his friends for their kindness to him in the 
past, etc. 1 

SENATOR HARLAN \S FEARS AND PROPOSAL. 

In some respects, the most striking evidence the writer 
has come upon, showing the existence in those formative days 
of a strong undertow of anxiety among Republicans of Iowa, 
lest the influx of Europeans untrained in the arts of self- 
government, should overwhelm our free institutions is the 
following letter of Senator Harlan to Clarke, dated at Wash- 
ington, D. C, December 1, 1856 : 

"It probably has occurred to you that the construction of 
four parallel lines of railroads through Iowa, will enable the 
opposition to flood the State with foreigners, who will prob- 
ably swamp us at the polls in 1858 and 1860. Would it not 
be well to provide a Registry law by act of the Legislature or 
to require it in the Constitution ? Unless something of this 
kind is done, I fear we will be unable to maintain our position 
in the galaxy of Republican States." 

Several facts make Senator Harlan's letter conclusive proof 
of the prevalence of the fears that made up the warp and 
woof of the American creed or cult. First it was written 
three weeks following the victory of his party, both in Iowa 
and generally throughout the north in the Fremont campaign. 
Second, he suggested the consideration of the wisdom of act- 
ing adversely towards the promotion of railroad construction 
in Iowa when the whole population of the State was feverishly 
pushing their congressmen to advance Iowa's interests by 
federal land grants. Third, he exhibited his proposal when 
the agitation for constitutional revision was culminating and 
he must have contemplated serious consideration of the limi- 



i The Daily Journal (Muscatine), March 6, 1856. 



—58- 

tations affecting the electoral privileges of the naturalized 
citizens in the forthcoming convention. Fourth, he wrote 
the letter when he was under no stress of mind as to his own 
political fortunes, his term as Senator not expiring until 1860, 
three years thereafter. Fifth, he communicated his sugges- 
tion to an active, ambitious leader, not only of his own party 
but of the American or Know-Nothing division thereof, and a 
known aspirant for senatorial honors. Senator Harlan was 
not a trimmer in politics nor a tight-rope-walking type of 
statesman, but one who thought earnestly upon public matters 
and spoke guardedly. We may conclude that he suffered 
from no hallucinations as to the political conditions of his 
constituents and urged no temporizing expedient for the sake 
of short-sighted party advantage. The letter was not made 
public at the time but it must have been written with a con- 
scious expectation that it would influence Mr. Clarke and 
through him the leaders of the party in the State, first in 
legislative halls and second, in the constitutional convention 
in which Mr. Clarke was to be facile princeps. 

PROTESTANT VERSUS CATHOLIC. 

The second great fact that provoked the animosities of the 
native born immigrants was dread of Catholicism. Here again 
ancestral traditions and geographical and industrial distribu- 
tion mainly account for the prejudices and performances of 
Iowa's Republicans between 1856 and 1860. Excepting the 
French, German and Irish the pioneers were chiefly communi- 
cants or adherents of Baptist, Campbellite or Christian, 
Methodist and Presbyterian churches ; these churches in 1850 
numbering 139 all told. Congregationalists, Episcopalians 
and Lutherans, Moravians and Quakers made up the balance 
of a vigorous protestant population, the reported numbers of 
all their churches being only 31 in 1850. The Catholics were 
reported as having 18 churches in that year and 16 of that 
number were located in counties on the Mississippi. There 
were none farther west than Johnson and Wapello counties. 1 

Such disproportions in relative numbers and such localiza- 



i U. S. Census, 1850. 



—59— 

tion in the regions controlled by the natives and foreign citi- 
zens and sundry other conditions engendered strenuous com- 
petitive proselytism and much malevolence. In those days 
churchmen and preachers generally believed in their creeds 
intensely and enforced or sought to enforce their tenets 
strictly. Those professing religious faith or in the active 
affiliation with its adherents did not await a morning news- 
paper to determine their belief and state of mind, but felt 
firmly and were terribly in earnest. Congregations were in 
truth churches militant. Now the mystery, the silent and 
the self-sufficient procedure of the priests of the Catholic 
church created huge phantasies in the minds of the Protes- 
tants. To nine out of ten churchmen in Iowa the Catholic 
church was an organization they had known or heard of 
somewhat "down east" but which was almost unfamiliar to 
the pioneers west of the river counties. Moreover the potent 
influence of the foreign citizen in politics — bidden and pushed 
thereto, be it noted, usually by designing and unscrupulous 
native politicians in the cities — and the coincidence of the 
Catholic faith with their political activity aggravated and 
superheated the natural antipathy of the native American 
stocks against the Catholics. The foremost factor in this 
anti-Catholic or anti-foreign propaganda were the preachers 
and adherents of the Methodist church, the dominant church 
in point of numbers and influence in Iowa prior to 1860. 
Senator Harlan was a conspicuous member and staunch pro- 
moter of the faith of that church, a fact that brought him 
many flings from anti-Know-Nothing critics. 1 Two illustra- 
tions taken from the first manifestations of Republicanism in 
Guthrie county will substantiate the foregoing and at the 
same time show how intimately the persons involved in the 
fateful decision at Chicago May 18, 1860, were likewise pre- 
viously associated. 

On March 16, 1856, the Republicans of Guthrie county had 
their first convention at Panora, the county seat. Their com- 
mittee on resolutions reported the following declaration of 
principles among others, which was adopted apparently with- 



i See letter of Col. Louis Schade of Burlington in Iowa Weekly State 
Reporter, June 8, 1859. 



—60— 

out dissent: "That we stand for the constitution and the 
principles therein guaranteed, and we deny the right of 
foreign despotisms — ecclesiastical or otherwise, to interfere 
with the rights or dictate the action of Freemen in the exer- 
cise of religious or political principles granted to us by that 
sacred instrument. ' ' L One of the committee signing that dec- 
laratiun was Thomas Seeley, who a few months later was 
chosen by Dallas, Guthrie and Polk counties as their delegate 
in the Constitutional Convention of 1857, defeating M. M. 
Crocker a lawyer of Ft. Des Moines, who later had a brilliant 
army career in the Civil War. Thomas Seeley was one of the 
original Lincoln men at the Chicago Convention. On the 
very day the Convention met at Panora, Judge James Hen- 
derson of Panora, a member of the Methodist church wrote 
a letter setting forth his ' ' disgust with members and ministers 
of the M. E. church. I have good reason to believe that there 
is a large majority of them [who] have joined that disgrace- 
ful organization commonly called Know-Nothings. " 2 

THE MAINE LIQUOR LAW. 

The advent of the Republican party in Iowa was coinci- 
dent with the culmination of a campaign for the suppression 
of intemperance — a vexatious problem that always tends to 
split political parties asunder. Here again the cleavage of 
interests and opinions broke in large part along racial lines; 
yet with much confusion and counter rifts within the native 
citizenship. The native stocks in religious professions were 
as we have seen, chiefly Baptists, Campbellites or Christians, 
Methodists and Presbyterians. These forces with the aggres- 
sive Congregationalists constituted the vanguard in the agita- 
tion that resulted in 1855 and 1856 in the adoption of the 
"Maine law" prohibiting the manufacture and sale of spirit- 
uous liquors except via a local State agent for "mechanical, 
medicinal and sacramental purposes." The Whigs in 1854 
had first declared for such a law. The Republicans in 1856 
became sponsors for prohibition as they have been ever since. 

It is doubtless true in the large, as Mr. Rhodes declares, 

i The Guthrie Sentinel, March 22, 1856. 
2 lb., April 19, 1856. 



—61— 

that "All the advocates of the Maine law were anti-slavery 
men," but his conclusion that "it is not apparent that the 
cause of freedom lost by union with the cause of prohibition" 1 
is to be accepted with some hesitation. The opponents of 
slavery or of its extension in Iowa as in nearly all the States 
of the northwest, made a complex of exceedingly heterogeneous 
groups that were to each other, — slavery aside — mutually re- 
pellant particles. This was notably so in Ohio, Michigan and 
Iowa, where Germans were numerous and the advocates of 
temperance aggressive and in the first and third States men- 
tioned more or less preponderant. 

Needless to observe this paternalistic legislation was re- 
garded by the French, Germans, Irish, Hollanders and Swiss 
in Iowa as an outrageous interference with some of their 
most cherished rights of personal liberty and utterly inde- 
fensible Their resistance was pronounced and continuous. 
Very soon the Republicans began to "weaken" the law in 
order to placate the contentious Germans. First the county 
agent was abolished; then, in 1857 "home-made" cider and 
wine were made salable; and in 1858 wine and beer were de- 
fined as non-intoxicants and breweries authorized and saloons 
for the sale thereof legitimized. But notwithstanding all 
parties, friends and opponents of severe measures, were dis- 
satisfied. 

The effect of the espousal of the Maine law upon the party 
strength of the Republicans cannot be definitely measured, 
but unquestionably it was adverse. Both German and Irish 
immigrants at first very largely, if not universally, joined 
the Democratic party. Their intense hatred of governmental 
oppression and slavery, however, made them turn toward the 
Whigs and then the Republicans. The Know-Nothing move- 
ment and radical temperance legislation produced a violent 
revulsion. Slavery was abhorrent; but so was such sump- 
tuary legislation. The former was an evil remote and only 
vaguely felt; the latter was an immediate palpable outrage, 
depriving them of rights and pleasures as dear as life itself. 
Twenty and thirty years later when the Republicans alligned 
themselves with advocates of such restrictive legislation thou- 



i History of the U. 8., Vol. II, p. 50. 



—62— 

sands of Germans in eastern Iowa deserted the party with the 
result that in 1890 the first Democratic governor since 1854 
was elected. On the other hand the party's effort to placate 
the Germans alienated the extremists who insisted upon rigor- 
ous enforcement of the prohibitory law. 

4. Smouldering Fires in 1857-1858. 

In the Constitutional Convention of 1857, the irritation 
and suspicions incident to Know-Nothingism, smouldered and 
on occasion blazed out. Members charged each other with 
adherence to its creed and with being beneficiaries of its prop- 
aganda. It is clear from the debates that the local groups 
or lodges were then inclined to affiliate or fuse as readily 
with the Democrats as with the Republicans, depending upon 
local conditions. When the Committee reported Article 3 
on "Right of Suffrage," recommending almost no change in 
the preliminary residence required, Mr. Wm. Penn Clarke 
urged that the time be increased from six months to one year 
in the State and from twenty days to six months in the county. 
In his speech, we find a distinct echo of Senator Harlan's 
letter previously quoted. "Within the next ten years," he 
said, "it is more than probable that we shall have an influx 
of population into our State of those who have no interest 
with our people, and who will leave us when the public works 
[R. R.'s] are completed, which induced them to come here. 
If the members of this Convention desire to place the people 
of this State at the mercy of this class of population, well 
and good ; they can do so. But I do not mean that it shall 
be done with my consent." 1 The first proposal was rejected; 
the vote, however, was not recorded; the second was lost by 
a close vote of 11 to 12. 2 

In the campaign of 1857, the Republicans, either because 
they deemed it safe and harmless, or were forced to screw 
their courage up to the sticking-point, squinted at the de- 
mands of the foreign citizens. Their platform contained 
some masterly generalities to the effect that "the spirit of 
our institutions as well as the constitution of our Country 

i Debates, vol. II, p. 864. 
2 Ibid, p. 868. 



—63— 

guarantee liberty of conscience and equality of rights," and 
they explicitly declare their opposition to "all legislation im- 
pairing their security. " 1 In a practical way, they exhibited 
their solicitude by nominating Mr. Oran Faville as their can- 
didate for first lieutenant-governor under the new Constitu- 
tion, as a "compliment" due the many estimable foreign citi- 
zens in the party in the State. But despite their anxious care, 
the thing would not down. In Burlington, the election went 
"disastrously" for the Republicans. No less a notable than 
the brilliant Fitz Henry Warren was defeated in his can- 
didacy for the legislature, because Judge Stockton wrote 
Clarke, "The Americans generally voted the Democratic 
ticket. This was caused in part by having a German on the 
ticket and by a great lukewarmness on the part of our 
friends. ' ' 

In his last message to the General Assembly, in January, 
1858, Governor Grimes urged the passage of a law for the 
registration of voters to protect the ballot box and to pre- 
serve the "elective franchise in its purity." He closed his 
recommendation with these significant observations: "With 
such a law, and with the strict and honest enforcement of 
the naturalization laws, we shall cease to see parties arrayed 
against each other on account of the birthplace of those who 
compose them, and every bona fide citizen will be secure in 
his just weight in the affairs of state. Without such a law, 
judging from recent events, it is feared that popular elections 
will become a reproach." The effort to secure a registration 
law was fruitless. The measure introduced was apparently 
very mild; "the odious section" (No. 13) merely required the 
naturalized citizen when challenged, to exhibit his papers to 
the Judges of Election. Its effect, however, would have been 
unequal. The opposition was intense. The passage of the 
bill was defeated under the leadership of D. A. Mahoney of 
Dubuque, who resorted to the desperate procedure of having 
the opponents leave the House of Representatives in a body, 
thus breaking a quorum. 2 In their platform that year, the 
Republicans were discreet — that is, silent. They denounced 



1 Fairall, lb., p. 44. 

2 See account of The Herald of Dubuque, September 21, 1859. 



—64- 

the Buchanan administration, the "infamous Lecompton 
Constitution" and with perfect abandon, insisted upon 
economy in the State administration and liberal appropria- 
tions for internal improvements. 1 

The smouldering fires of discontent and suspicion, however, 
did not subside. Smoke was everywhere and flashes and 
spurts of flame were seen. Far inland, among the towns and 
settlements along the Cedar, Iowa, Skunk, Des Moines and 
Raccoon rivers, Know-Nothingism or antipathy to the foreign 
born was the animus of much discussion. The open advocacy 
of exclusion or of severe restrictions upon their political 
privileges was common although the expediency of avowing 
the purpose was felt to be doubtful. The two parties tacked 
and veered, each charging the other with surreptitious alli- 
ances and fell designs. In Boone, Hamilton and Webster 
counties, the air was split with exploding charges and counter 
charges thrown by the highly suspicious patriots. The press 
bristled with such gracious references as "bog trotters," and 
"whiskey bruisers," "wooden shoes," and "beer guzzlers." 
"Freedom to the Nigger," and "Begone you dog!" to the 
foreigner were twin phrases that the Democratic press rang 
the changes on with great gusto. 2 "It is the same sentiment," 
continues the address to our "Adopted Citizen" that "gives 
a negro a vote in Connecticut and tramples your brethren in 
the dust for twenty-one years. For shame!" 3 






1 Fairall, lb., pp. 46-47. 

2 Ft. Dodge Sentinel, September, 4, 1858. 

3 Ft. Dodge Sentinel, September 4, 1858. The following, purporting to be 
a letter signed, "A Foreigner," is reproduced from the Sentinel of October 
9th. Tt illustrates not a little of the method and substance of political dis- 
cussion in the inland counties in 1858. The editor was the late John F. 
Duncombe : 

IRISHMEN! GERMANS! 

FOREIGNERS OF WHATEVER NAME 

OR NATION ! 

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE FOLLOWING 

INSULT TO YOU? 

The Boonesboro News, the ablest Republican paper published in this 
Judicial District, in commenting upon the speech of Mr. Elwood, our 
Democratic Candidate for Attorney General, uses the following language: 

"Is not the Negro Race as capable of exercising the right of suffrage as 
the hordes of Foreigners, which yearly land upon our shores ; and is not 
their right as good . . . Where can a more ignorant degraded set of 
beings be found than nine-tenths of our foreign population, and yet they 
are placed upon the scale of equality with the native citizen, both politi- 
cally and socially. " 

We ask any foreigner after being called "Bog Trotters and Whiskey 
Bruisers" by the Hamilton Freeman which was fully endorsed by the late 



SOME OF IOWA'S DELEGATES 
Chicago Convention, May 16-18, 1860 






J. F. BROWN, 
Lawyer 

JOHN W. THOMPSON, 
State Senator 

MICAJAH BAKER, 
Lawyer 






W. A. WARREN, 
Merchant 

BENJAMIN RECTOR, 
Lawyer 

E. G. BOWDOIN, 
Lawyer 



—65— 

This backfiring: and bushwhacking took place in the western 
parts of the northern, or second Congressional District, com- 
prehending nearly two-thirds of the State. That year the 
Republican congressional candidate was Wm, Vandever of 
Dubuque, who from 1856 to 1859 was pelted with the charge 
that he had joined a Know-Nothing Lodge in Dubuque, in 
1856, becoming an officer thereof. 1 Evidently he suffered a 
change of heart, due either to deliberation or discretion or 
discipline, for French, Germans, Irish and Swiss swarmed in 
Dubuque. The suspicions of the Germans of Davenport, how- 
ever, were not wholly allayed by his discreet and favorable 
utterances, for one of their most distinguished representatives, 
Hans Reimer Claussen, a one-time member of the German 
Parliament, demanded a more specific statement from Mr. 
Vandever. On September 8, 1858, he submitted and asked 
replies to the following questions: 

"1. Are you willing, when a member of Congress, vigor- 
ously and with all your power to oppose any attempt to 
change the laws of Naturalization so as to extend the time of 
probation ? 

"2. As any legislative measures which prevent a natural- 
ized citizen, after his naturalization for a certain length of 
time from voting, are equivalent to the extension of the time 
of probation, are you willing to act for or against such 
measures ? ' ' 

Mr. Vandever forthwith replied (September 11th) ex- 
plicitly: "In reply I have to say that I am content with the 
period now prescribed by law for the naturalization of persons 
of foreign birth, and were I a member of Congress, I should 
not hesitate to oppose any effort that might be made to ex- 
tend the time. 



County Convention In a resolution which was offered by the Hon. C. C. 
Carpenter. . . . Can you do it Irishmen? Can you do it Germans? 
Can you do it Norwegians? Can you do it Swedes? Will you lick the dust 
from the feet of your Tyrants? . . . Arouse! Awake! & & 

(Signed) A Foreigner. 

An examination of the files of The Freeman does not disclose any such 
statement as The Sentinel refers to. Mr. Aldrich informs the writer that it 
was not uncommon for his partizan critics in those days to suffer from 
delusions that induced them to assume that he must have said or probably 
would say sundry things alleged against him. 

l The Herald of Dubuque, September 18, 1859, and the Mississippi Val- 
ley Register, of Guttenberg, May 26, 1869. 
5 



—66— 

"In reply to the other inquiry, I have to say that I deem 
it peculiarly a subject for state legislation, but I am free to 
confess that when admitted to citizenship, I know of no 
reason why a man should be subjected to further probation 
as a qualification for voting. I certainly would not discrimi- 
nate in this particular, between citizens of native and citizens 
of foreign birth." 1 

5. The Blaze over the Massachusetts Law. 

The inattention of the Republicans in 1858 respecting the 
status of foreign born citizens was not permitted in 1859. 
The subject loomed up so suddenly and hugely that neither 
leaders nor party managers were allowed to dodge or hedge 
or take to the woods. The Republicans of Massachusetts had 
by legislative act, proposed to increase the limitations upon 
electoral privileges of foreigners by adding two years to the 
probationary period. The prominence of Massachusetts in the 
Nation's affairs immediately made the measure a matter of 
keen national interest. Iowa was then or later fondly called 
"The Massachusetts of the West," because of the prominence 
of New Englanders and Puritanic principles in the State. 

The Republican press of the middle and western States 
seems at first to have maintained silence as regards the enact- 
ment. In March a German, "An Iowa Farmer and True 
Republican," having looked "in vain" for " disapprovement 
of such a breach of plighted faith," and fearful that such 
silence meant approval wrote Greeley's Tribune protesting 
against the "unjust illiberal and offending conduct of the 
party in New England." He was not unmindful of the evils 
in elections and favored a "good registry law" based upon 
"strict equality" of treatment of foreign born. He urged 
that the naturalization period be reduced to three years and 
the right to vote be withheld for two years after. He did not 
blame the party for what was done in one State, but New 
Jersey was then apparently about to follow Massachusetts 
and " we have cause for suspicion" that the Republican party 



l For the letters of Messrs. Claussen and Vandever quoted above the 
writer is indebted to Dr. August P. Richter, now and for many years past 
editor of Der Demokrat of Davenport. Dr. Richter's kindness and pains- 
taking in the recovery of data in response to inquiries are but scantily 
acknowledged in this brief note. 



—67— 

"everywhere might attempt to treat us in the same manner as 
long as we hear not a single voice in our defense." He de- 
clares that "Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, 
Ohio, New York and perhaps Pennsylvania can be counted 
Republican through the strength of the German Republican 
vote." If the Republicans think that they can ignore the 
just claims of the Germans "I will only remind them of the 
fact that Caesar's legions were smashed in the woods of 
Germany. ' ' His vigorous letter drew an editorial on ' ' Natural- 
ization and Voting" from Greeley who denied that the 
law of Massachusetts was arbitrary in purpose : it was 
' ' based on a sound principle but wrong in going further than 
the principle requires." The Tribune concurred in the 
writer's suggestion of naturalization after three and elect- 
oral privileges after five years. 1 

Meantime the Germans of Iowa all along the Mississippi 
were aroused and became belligerent. They proceeded aggres- 
sively to discover and to expose the attitude of the Republicans 
towards the policy of the party in Massachusetts. They ex- 
hibited alike, good tactics and good strategy. Their recon- 
naissance in April took the form of a letter to the Congres- 
sional leaders. Three interrogatories were addressed to them 
which in substance were (1) Were they in favor of the laws 
of Naturalization then in force and opposed to all extension 
of the probation time ; ( 2 ) Was it the duty of Republicans to 
"war upon each and every discrimination that may be at- 
tempted between the native born and adopted citizens, as to 
right of suffrage"; and (3) Did they condemn the late action 
of the Republicans in the Massachusetts Legislature ? 2 The 
prominent signers were Mr. John Bittman and Dr. Carl Hill- 
guertner of Dubuque, Messrs. Theodore ALshausen, Theodore 
Guelich and Henry Lischer, of Davenport, and others of Bur- 
lington, Ft. Madison and Keokuk. 

Senator Grimes first responded (April 30th) declaring con- 
cisely, the measure of Masaschusetts "false and dangerous 



1 N. Y. Tribune (w. ), April 16, 1859. For the citations given in the 
paragraph the writer is indebted to Mr. John P. Schee of Indianola, who 
courteously granted him permission to examine his file of the weekly 
Tribune. 

2 See Salter's Grimes, pp. 119-120. 



—68— 

in principle" and condemning it "without equivocation or 
reserve." Senator Harlan's reply (May 2nd) was an ex- 
tended discussion of the matter in issue. 1 His letter was re- 
printed in broadside for general distribution, the author mind- 
ful, no doubt, that his re-election to the Senate would be a 
matter of lively public interest in January, 1860. Colonel 
S. R. Curtis of Keokuk responded (May 13th) at considerable 
length, but plumply saying "as to two years additional proba- 
tion, I am utterly opposed to it." Mr. Vandever, answering 
(May 21st) was no less explicit, being opposed to any action 
adverse to the rights of adopted citizens under the laws then 
in force, and deploring the action of Massachusetts. He called 
attention to his letter to Mr. H. R. Claussen, written in 1858. 
It is not insignificant here that Abraham Lincoln's letter 1 
(May 17th) to Theodore Canisius of Illinois was reprinted 
in Der Demokrat of Davenport, in which he expressed 
himself in clear, strong terms upon this issue, saying, "as I 
understand the Massachusetts provision, I am against its adop- 
tion in Illinois or in any other place where I have a right to 
oppose it. " 2 

Meantime, Mr. John A. Kasson, chairman of the Republican 
State Central Committee, who always could quickly distin- 
guish a hawk from a handsaw realized the danger to Republi- 
can supremacy in Iowa imminent in the intense, belligerent 
feelings of the Germans and had acted. He and his confreres 
of the committee made public a resolution adopted by them 
April 18th, refusing all countenance to the Massachusetts law 
and repudiating the principles thereby exemplified. 3 Among 
the co-signers with Mr. Kasson, were Mr. Nicholas J. Rusch, 
a prominent German of Davenport, and Mr. Thomas Seeley 
of Guthrie county, already referred to, all three being mem- 
bers of Iowa's Republican Delegation at Chicago the following 
year. 

This unanimity of opposition among the foremost Repub- 
licans to the movement in Massachusetts, did not allay the sus- 
picions of all Germans nor did it meet with uniform endorse- 

i Burlington Hawk-eye, May 11, 1859. 

2 Der Demokrat, May 25, 1859; all of the letters referred to in tne 
paragraph above were published therein on the same or previous dates. 

3 The Guardian, Independence, May 5, 1859. 



—69— 

ment among the Republicans. A bitter not to say virulent 
discussion was precipitated, that did not end until the close 
of the campaign in the Fall. In the first place, as the Demo- 
cratic press was alert and prompt to point out, the action of 
the State Central Committee was adversely regarded by many 
Republican editors, The Oskaloosa Herald declaring that ' ' the 
Committee have usurped its authority, and by its late pro- 
nunciamento, compromises the Republican party of Iowa." 1 
Simultaneously with the disapproval of the action of Massa- 
chusetts, such influential papers as The Hamilton Freeman, 
The Muscatine Journal, The Vinton Eagle ~ and The Inde- 
pendence Guardian, were advocating a Registration law which 
the foreign born citizens knew was aimed chiefly at them. In 
addition to these irritating causes, Senator Harlan 's letter con- 
tained not a little that aroused criticism and recrimination. 
Instead of replying briefly to Messrs. Hillguertner, Alshausen 
et al, Senator Harlan discussed at length the general consid- 
erations involved, the evils of unrestricted immigration and 
the grave dangers possible in the future. More than this, he 
dealt with the problem of negro slavery as well as with the 
problem of naturalization and electoral privileges. One can 
find little or nothing in his discussion of the subject against 
which objection will lie on abstract or philosophical grounds. 
He was lucid, forceful and conservative and considerate of 
pros and cons, both as to the future and the present. There 
were evils and Congress and the States must some time deal 
with them. Nevertheless, he concluded by rejection of the 
action of Massachusetts. Still his letter brought upon him 
sharp rejoinders. The foremost cause, doubtless, was the 
fact that he was Iowa's senior Senator, whose term of office 
was about to expire, and he had already achieved fame at 
Washington. Further he was prominent in the Methodist 
church, a factor of no mean power in politics. The imme- 
diate causes of the debate his letter produced were the adverse 
inferences his critics could easily draw from his philosophical 
generalities. All persons "who possessed requisite virtue and 
intelligence" should be permitted to vote; but it was "very 

i Quoted in The Express and Herald, Dubuque, May 8, 1859. 
2 The Express and Herald, May 1, 1859. 



—70- 

difficult to establish a standard": "yet the latter object can 
be partially attained by indirection." He refers to "the mass 
of foreigners" and "mendicants, vagrants and criminals" 
that come with them. The rules of "restriction should be 
general" but "the length of the probationary residence must 
ever remain an open question"; for his mind's eye foresaw a 
time when "our relations with the hordes of Asia" might re- 
sult in an immigration of a "crude population of millions," 
sufficient, if admitted to citizenship, to inundate our cities, 
and eastern and western States. 1 

The criticisms of Mr. J. B. Dorr, editor of The Herald of 
Dubuque, were perhaps typical of those in the Democratic 
press. He commented caustically upon the generalities of Mr. 
Harlan's argument. If the matter should be treated as an 
"open question" and the best results were to be obtained by 
"indirection" he necessarily squinted favorably upon the 
measures of Know-Nothingism. "They [the Republicans] en- 
deavor first by the false cry of 'nigger, nigger' to enlist 
against the Democracy the free white sons of Europe and 
when the Democratic party is put down they then turn round 
and call their allies 'mendicants, vagabonds and criminals' as 
Senator Harlan does. Nor is this all, but they proscribe them 
and place above them in political rights the greasy runaway 
negroes from southern plantations as Republican Massachu- 
setts does. ' ' 2 

Perhaps the most telling arraignment of the Republicans 
anent the Massachusetts law was put forth in a letter of Col. 
Louis Schade of Burlington and widely published. 3 He 
pointed out that the American party in the south and the 
Republican party in the north had the same warp and woof 
in their makeup, that the N. Y. Tribune had then but recently 
said that it would "heartily and zealously support" for presi- 
dent "one like John Bell, Edward Bates, or John M. Botts," 
well-known "chiefs of Know-Nothingism," that the Repub- 



i The writer is indebted to Dr. G. E. Thode of Burlington for a copy 
of Senator Harlan's letter as it appeared in The Hawk-eye, May 11, 1859. 

2 The Herald, Dubuque, May 13, 1859. 

3 The Weekly Iowa State Reporter, Iowa City, June 8, 1859, and The 
Herald, Dubuque, May 31st ; some portions are omitted in the latter. Colo- 
nel Schaile was later for nearly thirty years editor of the Washington 
(D. C.) Sentinel. 



—71— 

licans and Americans or Know-Nothings of New Jersey and 
New York in 1858 had made agreements to extend the proba- 
tionary period and he cites Horace Greeley's approval. He 
then pays his respects to the letter of Mr. Harlan ' ' Republican 
Senator, Bishop of the Methodist church in spe, some years 
ago a good Know-Nothing 1 and also a Negro Equality 
Apostle" whose references to the "mass" of foreigners, "men- 
dicants," "Asiatics" etc, arouse his ire. The Yankee 
and his blue laws, his Puritanism and Pharasaism receive his 
finest scorn. The "Maine law" he observes "like everything 

intolerant and despotic originated in New England 

The Republican party was started in New England, the brains, 
shoulders and head of the party are in New England. What 
New England commands, the Republicans of other States 
obey. " 2 He says pointedly that an ignorant negro after one 
year's residence in Massachusetts could cast his ballot, but a 
residence of seven years would be required of a Carl Schurz. 

These arguments of The Herald and Colonel Schade were 
given added pith and point by the spread of a substantial rumor 
in May that plans were under way in some of the northern 
States to people the unsettled counties of northwestern Iowa 
with negroes, emigrants and refugees from the south. Fat 
was added to the flames when a Republican alderman of 
Keokuk flippantly asserted that "he would rather see Iowa 
colonized by negroes than by . . . Dutch and Irish." 3 

The alignment and morale of the Democrats were thrown 
into confusion, however, by a heavy rear fire from their own 
ranks and from the national citadel itself. Lewis Cass, Secre- 
tary of State, on May 17th, had written Felix Le Clerc of 
Tennessee, that naturalization in this country would not "ex- 
empt" him from claims of France for unfulfilled military 
service avoided by his emigration should he return to his 



1 Colonel Schade refers to a common charge that in 1856 at Dubuque 
Senator Harlan was initiated in a Know-Nothing lodge along with Wm. 
Vandever. See The Herald Dubuque, on editorial page, May 26, 1859. 
Reasserted September 18th, in editorial on "German Republicans of Iowa 
and Wisconsin." The writer has seen neither denial nor proof of the 
charge. 

2 "What Massachusetts does is felt from the Atlantic to the Pacific," 
Carl Scnurz on True and False Americanism, an address delivered in 
^aneuil Hall, Boston, April 18, 1859. See .V. Y. Tribune (w.), April 30th. 

3 The Herald, May 26, 1859, following of The Keokuk Journal. 



—72— 

native land. 1 The dismay and fury of the anti-administration 
Democrats was great indeed, for The Herald exclaimed that 
the "worst Know-Nothing in the country never conceived of a 
depth of humiliation for the naturalized citizen equal to that 
proposed by Gen. Cass as the organ of the Administration," 
and in most peremptory terms Mr. Dorr demanded the sum- 
mary dismissal of Cass from the cabinet. With this protest, 
a call for a county Democratic convention was issued and the 
anti-administration forces asked to convene with a view to 
prevent an endorsement of Buchanan's administration at the 
approaching State Democratic Convention. The Le Clerc let- 
ter aroused the Germans as well as the French. Secretary 
Cass was bombarded with inquiries and protests. His letter 
of June 14th, to Mr. A. V. Hofer of Cincinnati, and his in- 
structions to Minister "Wright at Berlin (July 8th), in which 
he said the American government would protect natural- 
ized citizens against all adverse claims arising subsequent to 
emigration were eagerly declared by the Democrats to be a 
"back down" on the part of the administration. 2 A close 
scrutiny of the two letters, however, shows that there was 
no inconsistency and no modification of Secretary Cass' first 
announcement — a view which was originally set forth by 
Wheaton and incorporated in the Bancroft treaty of 1868 with 
Germany, and to-day governs the diplomacy and foreign rela- 
tions of the United States. 3 

In the midst of the discussion the people were afforded an 
illustration of the practical significance to Iowa's foreign born 
citizens, of Secretary Cass' declaration of national policy. 
There was published a summons received by Mr. Frederick 
A. Gniffke, then as now editor of Der National Demokrat of 
Dubuque issued by the royal court of his native city of Dant- 
zic citing him to appear in person before said tribunal for 
trial on the charge of avoiding military service, the summons 
further declaring that in case of non-appearance the investi- 



1 Ibid, June 16, 1859. 

2 Ibid, and N. Y. Tribune (w.), July 30th. The American Minister at 
Berlin was Joseph Wright, brother of Geo. G. Wright, then Chief Justice of 
Iowa. 

3 Moore's Digest of International Law, Vol. Ill, contains the Le Clerc 
letter, p. 588, and the Hofer letter, pp. 572-573. 



—73— 

gation and decision would be "proceeded with in contum- 
acium." 1 

6. The Campaign of 1859. 

Notwithstanding the gross faults, misconduct and internal 
discord of the Democratic party with respect to its national 
administration the Republicans of Iowa prepared with anxiety 
for the campaign of 1859. There were grave reasons for 
alarm. The administration of Governor Lowe, or rather the 
general developments just preceding and during his term, 
were not satisfactory. It began with commotion over a serious 
scandal in the location of the capitol site in Des Moines. 
There had been scandalous mismanagement and perversion of 
the school funds in the office of the Superintendent of Public 
Instruction. Multitudinous grief prevailed in the affairs of 
the Des Moines Navigation Company that aroused fierce ani- 
mosities among the land claimants along the river. The air 
was split with charges of corruption in the location and con- 
struction of the Insane Hospital at Mt. Pleasant. The re- 
formers of the party under the pressure of "progressive" 
ideas had augmented appropriations beyond income and a de- 
ficit or debt above the constitutional limit loomed up. So 
obviously haphazard and expensive was the State's financial 
administration that the Republicans confessed judgment. 
The legislature provided for a Commission of three to investi- 
gate and report upon the condition of affairs and recommend 
beneficial reforms. Of the three appointed by Governor 
Lowe, Messrs. John A. Kasson and Thomas Seeley were the 
party's members, the former being chairman. The dissatis- 
faction arising from the party's financial administration was 
intensified by the general industrial distress then prevalent 
as a result of the excessive speculation in private and public 
local improvements that collapsed with the panic of 1857. 

Plus their financial worries the Republicans were anxious 
over "moral issues." The Germans were aroused by the 
action of Massachusetts and irritated by the restrictions 
of the enfeebled ' ' Maine law. ' ' The Democrats in their State 
platform flatly declared the prohibitory law "unjust and 
burdensome in its operation and wholly useless in the sup- 

i The Express and Herald, Dubuque, June 16, 1859. 



—74— 

pression of intemperance," and demanded its repeal. But 
the Republican party leaders knew that they dare not capit- 
ulate to such demands for they had already aroused the dis- 
gust of the extreme advocates of prohibition and further 
retrocession would cause a revolt among the militant Baptists, 
Christians, Congregationalists, Methodists and Quakers such 
as nearly defeated John H. Gear in 1877 in his first race for 
governor. Finally on the subject of slavery the party con- 
fronted many pitfalls. Although the outrages in Nebraska 
and Kansas had served their purposes well, from 1854 to 1858 
there was a lull in the public indignation. There were many 
signs of reaction. Commercial interests were crying out 
against further agitation. The southerners in Iowa were as 
certain to balk at abolitionism as at the extension of slavery 
and they wanted to believe and for the most part inclined to 
make themselves believe that the matter could be dealt with as 
Stephen A. Douglas contended. Perhaps a sign of this feel- 
ing was the defeat of Mr. J. B. Grinnell in his contest for 
renomination to the State Senate in 1859. He had drafted 
the original address of the Republicans to the voters of Iowa 
in 1856. He was conspicuous as an abolitionist. The Demo- 
crats conceded that he was a man of "decided talents and 
energy." His defeat was therefore pronounced by them a 
rebuke to abolitionism. 1 It is clear that turn which way they 
would the Republicans were between Scylla and Charybdis. 
The Democrats still felt that Iowa was normally within 
their own domain and its reconquest was a matter of more 
than local interest. Buchanan's administration at Washing- 
ton and Douglas, no less, were earnestly desirous of regaining 
the State for their gubernatorial candidate. Plans were care- 
fully laid. The strongest man was picked — Augustus C. 
Dodge of Burlington. He had represented Iowa in Congress 
for eighteen years, twelve of which were in the Senate. The 
movement to make him the Democratic candidate was co- 
incident with the termination of his residence at the court of 
Madrid as our Minister to Spain. Knowing the intimate rela- 
tions of the Dodges with chiefs of Buchanan's administra- 



l See The Herald, Dubuque, August 5, 1859. 



—75— 

tion we may well suspect concert and pre-arrangement at 
Washington. The earnest, set purpose of the Democrats may 
be inferred from the charge commonly made and believed 
by the Republican leaders that a sum approximating $30,000 
had been raised chiefly in Washington and in Wall street, 
wherewith to carry the Democratic ticket in Iowa in 1859. 

The Republicans realized the seriousness of the situation 
and they went about vigorously to deal with it. Governor R. 
P. Lowe desired a second term and normally would have had 
a second nomination accorded him, but the leaders knew 
that the struggle was to tax their party strength to the utmost. 
They therefore set him aside and chose Samuel J. Kirkwood, 
who had lived in Iowa but four years. Although at the time 
an unpretentious farmer and miller near Iowa City, and inci- 
dentally a State Senator, he had been a leader in central 
Ohio a few years before and here immediately demonstrated 
that he was a man of extraordinary mental and moral potency 
in public affairs, an adroit canvasser and a profound and 
straightforward reasoner. Governor Grimes regarded Kirk- 
wood as the strongest all-round man in point of mental ability 
moral courage and physical endurance, in meeting the rig- 
orous exigencies of campaigning in Iowa. The Convention 
"cordially" approved the action of the State Central Com- 
mittee relative to the Massachusetts law and made a simi- 
lar declaration. As an earnest of their sincerity Senator 
Nicholas J. Rusch of Davenport, who had worked in the 
legislature for the modification of the Maine law was nomi- 
nated for lieutenant-governor. At that time he spoke En- 
glish with marked difficulty and the critical partizan press 
had much sport over the fact. A paper in central Iowa 
with American notions which, in the main, supported the 
"plow handle" ticket 1 but could not stomach his candidacy, 
declared that Mr. Rusch "would not have received a nomina- 
tion if it had not been for the course recently taken by Massa- 
chusetts in relation to the naturalization of foreigners. His 
nomination was made the salve to heal the wounded feelings 



l Messrs. Kirkwood and Rusch were farmers and much was made of the 
fact at the barbecues and rallies. 



—76— 

of his countrymen in this State. His nomination was de- 
manded as a condition of their future fidelity." 1 

The debates of the ensuing campaign were sharp and 
strenuous. The Republicans were buffeted with charges of 
Abolitionism and Know-Nothingism, corruption and paternal- 
ism and recreancy to temperance. Kirkwood was charged 
with being a "renegade from the dark lantern fraternity" 
still tainted with the vices of Know-Nothingism. 2 The dis- 
cussion of the temperance question became positively vicious 
in its virulence; not even the State's representatives in the 
United States senate were exempt from gross attack. The 
junior Senator was openly charged with being the owner of 
a beer garden in Burlington 3 and the senior Senator was 
flouted as "the mighty Ajax of the Maine law" with the asser- 
tion made on the stump that he was found imbibing in a 
saloon in Des Moines at the Republican State Convention. 4 
An instructive illustration of the ticklish conditions that ex- 
asperated and taxed the wits of party leaders may be given. 
The incident occurred at the opening of the campaign. A 
Reverend Mr. Jocelyn, a Methodist minister, had been engaged 
to deliver a series of lectures, sermons or speeches upon tem- 
perance before the congregations of churches or members of 
temperance organizations in central Iowa roundabout Des 
Moines. He evidently viewed the prospects with a gloomy 
eye, and with reason. The reaction which follows drastic 
sumptuary legislation such as the Maine law had set in 
strong. The open as well as the surreptitious violation of 
the statute was increasing. Public sentiment in its favor was 
waning and its opponents were gaining ground. Vigorous de- 
fensive measures were clearly imperative as Mr. Jocelyn re- 
garded the situation, and he spoke out with vigor, carrying 
the war into Africa. He attacked the candidacy of Nicholas 
J. Rusch, who being a German, was a representative of the 
population that especially protested against the prohibitory 
law. Mr. Jocelyn was quoted as saying that he "would 



1 Weekly Iowa Visitor, Indianola, July 7, 1859. For this citation the 
writer is indebted to Mr. Jas. M. Knox, of Des Moines. 

2 The Herald, Dubuque, July 21, 1859. 

3 Iowa Weekly State Reporter, June 8, 1859. 

4 The Herald, Dubuque, September 14, 185'J. 



—77— 

rather vote for the most ultra-slavery propagandist than ,c 
vote for Rusch." His hard hitting had immediate effect. 
The Republican leaders both local and State became alarmed 
for grumbling and threats were heard among the faithful. 
The queries and rejoinders were: "Are Methodists to cut 
the ticket? We will make it cut both ways. If you cut 
Rusch we cut Methodist." The latter meant Senator Harlan. 
His friends were informed that if Mr. Jocelyn was not stopped 
the friends of the ticket supporting Mr. Rusch would fight 
Senator Harlan's re-election the following January. 

The Republicans in all their party history in Iowa have 
probably waged no more vigorous campaign than they con- 
ducted in 1859. They had a phalanx of effective speakers, 
energetic workers and shrewd managers, many of whom after- 
wards gained interstate and national fame and some inter- 
national distinction. 1 Their work was aggressive and well 
organized. They had a cause that was worthy of their en- 
thusiasm. The aggressions of the Slavocrats both in and 
out of Congress "the unparalleled profligacy of the [national] 
administration, the enormous increase of expenditures from 
forty odd to over eighty million per annum and the consequent 
hard times" 2 under which the people were laboring made 
Buchanan 's regime odious in the north, and discord sundered 
the strength of the Democrats in the State. Despite all these 
favoring conditions Kirkwood's majority was less than 3,000 
in an aggregate vote of 110,048. Grimes' majority of 1,823 
in 1854 represented a margin of advantage of 4.1 per cent, 
of the total vote, while Kirkwood's majority of 2,964 gave 
him a surplus of only 2.6 per cent, of the aggregate vote cast. 



i Among the leaders earnestly supporting Kirkwood were Senators 
Harlan and Grimes, Messrs. Fitz Henry Warren, Samuel F. Miller, Timo- 
thy Davis and James Thorington, Francis Springer and Hiram Price, James 
B. Howell, Clark Dunham, John Teesdale and John Mahin, Addison H. 
Saunders, F. W. Palmer, Charles Aldrich, Jacob Rich and A. B. F. Hil- 
dreth. Col. Alvin Saunders, Wm. H. Seevers and James F. Wilson, Josiah 
B. Grinnell. Judge Wm. Smyth, Eliphalet Price and Reuben Noble, Samuel 
R. Curtis, Wm. Vandever, Charles C. Nourse and John A. Kasson, Gren- 
ville M. Dodge, Caleb Baldwin, Ed Wright and C. C. Carpenter, Henry 
O'Conner and Jacob Butler, Joseph M. Beck, John W. Noble and John 
W. Rankin, Henry Strong, George W. McCrary and Hawkins Taylor, 
Moses McCoid. R. L. B. Clarke an 1 James W. McDill, George G. Wright, 
Henry P. Scholte and James B. Weaver, N. D. Carpenter and N. M. Hub- 
bard. John Edwards, S. A. Rice, W. P. Hepburn and William Loughridge, 
A. W. Hubbard and H. Clay Caldwell, William Penn Clarke and Coker 
F. Clarkson, John H. Gear and William B. Allison. 

2 Senator Harlan's letter last cited. 



—78— 

7. The Conditions of Republican Success for 1860. 

In the immediate clinch and tug of politics it is not neces- 
sarily the merits of one's case or the justice of his cause that 
is decisive in securing the immediate favor of political leaders 
and party managers but rather the amount of trouble one 
can make or seem to threaten. Their power for immediate 
good or ill depends upon the ratios of two conditions : first the 
degree of balance or equipollence between the major parties, 
and second, the degree of co-ordination or unity found within 
each party's separate alignment. In 1855 the Democratic 
platform observed that the Republican party of Iowa was 
made up of ' ' discordant elements. ' ' The assertion as we have 
seen was true when made and it was largely true in 1859-60. 
Holding their supremacy by a narrow margin of excess pop- 
ular support Iowa's delegates at Chicago knew full well that 
Abolitionism, Know-Nothingism and Prohibitionism were sub- 
jects of very high potential, to be let alone so far as practicable 
if their party was to win a victory in the State in the ensuing 
campaign. Moreover they were like surly dogs not les$3 
dangerous because asleep or drowsy-eyed. 

Before 1860 Know-Nothingism was an exploded fallacy and 
its methods or tactics but little approved or followed. The 
American party was also a moribund body made up chiefly 
of " dry hearts and dead weights" as the late Carl Schurz 
hit them off. Nevertheless, in January, 1860, native anti- 
foreign prejudices were still so pronounced in Iowa or the 
memories of the old controversies and old suspicions so much 
in mind that the Republican Convention of Scott county in 
selecting their delegates to the State Convention in Des Moines 
that was to pick the delegates to Chicago paid careful atten- 
tion to racial animosities and considerations. In the de- 
scription of the county delegation five were reported as Ger- 
mans, including Lieutenant-Governor Rusch; five were listed 
as Americans of which Mr. John W. Thompson was one ; and 
three were given as Irish. 1 In the Convention at Des Moines 
we shall find that marked consideration was given to those 
important factional potentialities. It was well, too. In Feb- 

i Davenport Gazette, quoted in the Daily Journal of Muscatine, Janu- 
ary 6, 1860. 



—79— 

ruary the remnants of the party sent Mr. William L. Toole, 
of Mt. Pleasant, an influential pioneer citizen of Iowa as a 
delegate to Washington where the Americans formulated the 
manifesto that constituted the ground work whereon was 
built the Constitutional Union party which nominated Bell 
and Everett in May following, 1 — a ticket that perplexed the 
party leaders in Iowa in the ensuing campaign. Later in 
March, it was in Scott county that originated the movement 
that had some part, and there is reason to suspect a major 
part, in thwarting the well laid plans of Horace Greeley of 
The Tribune and the Blairs of Maryland and Missouri. 

The political conditions in Iowa on the eve of the great con- 
test of 1860 have been described with what may seem undue 
detail with a view to demonstrating four facts : 

First, The political conditions in Iowa in 1860 were like 
those obtaining in what were called the "battle ground 
States, ' ' viz. : New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois. 

Second, Neither Horace Greeley's assertion (February 8, 
1860) that like Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota, Iowa was 
"Republican anyhow," nor Senator Harlan's declaration at 
Washington (February 12th) that Iowa was "strong enough 
to carry any good man," was warranted; but on the contrary 
the statement of The New York Herald (March 7th) that 
"The States which the Republicans consider doubtful in the 
ensuing campaign are Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana 
and New Jersey. The delegates, then, from these States hold 
a balance of power . . . " — was more nearly the correct 
forecast. 

Third, In view of the narrow majority by which the Re- 
publicans of Iowa held control of the State and the pro- 
nounced inability of the party by reason of the bitter ani- 
mosities of abolitionists and negro-phobists, the sharp antag- 
onisms of foreigners and natives, the antipathies of Catholics 
and Protestants, and the contentiousness of the advocates and 
opponents of radical temperance legislation, the nomination of 
a candidate for President whose character or career would 
irritate or inflame those prejudices — prejudices in some cases 



l See N. Y. Herald, February 21, 1860. 



FROM FIKE & FWE 
New and Old Baaki 

307 4th St. 
DES MOt«t£8, IA. 



—80- 



so deep set that as Kirkwood put it in February, 1860, "fire 
would not burn" them out — such a nomination would have 
been unwise in the extreme. 

Fourth, If the foregoing conclusions are well-founded then 
Grimes ' advice to Wm. Penn Clarke in 1856, viz. : ' ' We can- 
not elect Mr. Seward or any other old politician against whom 
there are old chronic prejudices which you know are hard to 
be conquered. To build up and consolidate a new party we 
must have men who have not been before the people as poli- 
ticians" — was equally sound on May 18, 1860. 



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